Three former winners will be in the field when the ninth annual Downeast Metro Amateur Golf Tournament is held at the Kebo Valley Golf Club in Bar Harbor and the Bangor Municipal Golf Course on Saturday and Sunday.
The A and B Flight golfers will tee off at Kebo on Saturday before playing their final round at Bangor Muni on Sunday and it will be flip-flopped for the C-D golfers as they will play Muni on Saturday and Kebo on Sunday.
Two of the former champs, Cape Elizabeth’s Reese McFarlane, who won it in 2020, and Portland’s John Hayes, the 2017 winner, will tee off in a threesome at Kebo on Saturday at 7:30 a.m. Defending champ Tim Black from Bangor will tee off at 9:20. He was the first player out of the B Flight to win it, since all the other champs came out of the A Flight.
“There are a lot of good players in the field,” Kebo Valley golf pro Peiter DeVos said. It’s going to be a great weekend.”
For the second consecutive year, the tournament is full as 167 golfers are entered, 96 from the A-B Flights and 71 from the C-D grouping, something Bangor Municipal pro Rob Jarvis called “a great sign for the tournament.
The courses have both absorbed rain throughout the week, although Thursday’s weather was much different for each location. DeVos said he had a nice sunny day on Thursday without any rain, while Jarvis’ Bangor course had a steady dose of precipitation.
“Unfortunately, the course conditions are less than ideal with all the moisture,” he said. “(Thursday) was the tipping point. The players will get preferred lies, even in the rough. Otherwise, they would be hitting mudball after mudball and we don’t want to do that to them.
In both instances, players will be able to clean their golf balls and place them in a dry area near the spot it landed.
Jarvis and DeVos pointed out that the golfers won’t be getting the rolls they would normally get. The balls are going to land and stick in that spot, leaving experienced players who can hit iron shots for distance with an advantage, Jarvis said.
Players who have yet to play the Bangor Municipal Golf Course will have to adapt to its new layout which includes the removal of hundreds of trees from four holes on the back nine. The trees were taller than what is safely allowed near the runway at Bangor International Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration.
Jarvis pointed out that practice rounds were limited because carts weren’t allowed on the course on Thursday. Despite the rain, both pros said their courses were in good shape.
“The health of our turf is as good as I’ve seen it in a long time,” Jarvis said. “It’s frustrating because we can’t mow it like we normally would.”
One player who will be in the mix will be Thomaston’s Ricky Jones, who won his record seventh Mid-Amateur tournament a week ago at the Point Sebago Golf Course in Casco. The Maine Golf Hall of Famer was third at the Downeast-Metro a year ago, two shots behind Black.
