By TONY CHERBY/For the Sentinel
BUENA VISTA – There are golf holes that, once visited, are never forgotten. “The Road Hole” at St. Andrews comes to my mind.
Any hope for a birdie on 17 requires a blind tee shot over a hotel. In 2015, in his final round at the Home of Golf, I followed Sir Nick Faldo in sideways wind and rain – or a normal day on the famous peninsula where it all began. Faldo sank a putt from off the green to record just his second birdie ever at 17, in a career spanning 40 years and six major wins. This convinces me that “Road” (it’s real name) is the hardest par-4 in our game.
The 16th at Firestone in Ohio also is a signature hole, memorable for the carnage it has caused. I lived near there in the late ’60s and got to follow The Big 3, Lee, and even Sam down that alley a few times. It was over 600 yards and rarely reached in two. Modern technology has rendered that a distant memory. Some pros can hit it now with a driver and iron, despite that the longest hole on tour was stretched to almost 680 yards.
You can add the par-5 13th at Buena Vista Country Club to my list of iconic tracks. Pazuzu was the demon they unleashed in “The Exorcist.” If the golf gods chose Pazuzu to design a hellacious piece of golf real estate, the results could be that hole. It’s called “Tortuous Twists, Turns and The Tor.”
When you get to 13’s green, the last in a long line of treacherous shots greets you. The big, unique carpet features a slope in the middle – a wall that would require snow tires to climb from the lower level to the upper in an ice storm. This time, the flag was on the bottom. Our team was on the higher tier, contemplating an impossible par putt, when bingo, a ball rolled past my foot. More than 200 yards away between an opening in the 75-foot conifers that line the right side of the fairway, Greg Harlan was waving apologetically for hitting into us. Talk about reaching a par-5 in 2! Here’s how Greg describes the Shot of the Day and probably of the year: “Bill and Tony both hit perfect drives on number 13 so I took a super aggressive and lucky line over the trees to the left, knocking off about 40 to 50 yards. Both Bill and Tony [already] hit nice shots from there so I again was able to swing for the fences from about 240 yards. I didn’t think I could get it there but I caught it perfectly. Bill put his putt right down to about 2 feet and we were in for a birdie.” Team Greg Harlan, Bill Wright and Tony Cornell’s 66 gave them the win, but only by a single stroke. Greg’s heroics at 13 made the difference. The team birdied 3, 5, 7, 8, 9 and 13; a bogey on 15 is all that besmirched an otherwise clean card.
Team Rick Schultz, Mark Franks, Jim Hurston and Lou Salgado came back to the barn with a runner-up 67 (-5) after birdies on 3, 7, 12 and 16, a single blemish on 18, and an eagle on 3. Eagles for old-timers are rare, even in a scramble. According to Mark, “It was all Rick. We used his drive, his second shot was within 10 foot and he made the putt. It was very impressive.”
Talk about an understatement!
Two teams were T-3 with 69s (-3): Team Frank Coppenbarger, Rich Hawthorne, Doug Baird and George Curtis notched birdies on 3, 5, 9 and 12, but bogied 16. Team Roger Probert, Tom Ghar and Yours Truly birdied 3, 7, 8 and 17. Our lone stumble was a bogey on 13.
Coming down the homestretch with three holes to go, 15, 16, 17 (they started on 18), Team Ralph DeLanzo, Dave Carter, Stan Borucki and Dane Mayson were not having a great day. They were +2, and not happy. On 15, however, the golf gods decided to toss them a few bones. Faced with a 40-footer, Mayson, a solid short-sticker and designated cleanup putter for the team, knocked one in for an incredible birdie. Then on 16, in his own humble words, Dane said, “I was able to be schooled by three very good putts, and actually paid attention, and got lucky.” He had jarred another second monster putt, erasing that +2 deficit. And the fireworks weren’t over.
Their final hole, the rocky and watery 17th, played into a brisk breeze that befouled many a solid strike, twice for my team. But not for Steady Ralph Delanzo, who owns 17. His 4’1” effort was closest in 2025, and he leads again this season: he pulled up to 5’1” two weeks ago so it’s not that surprising that he ended up 18” away from the Promised Land this week. It’s a good thing for the rest of us that these guys peaked too late.
Next week, we’ll return to our regular match play format or the young season’s fourth of many such skirmishes that shape the core of our 2026 Race to September.
At top, Scramble winners Greg Harlan, Bill Wright & Tony Cornell came home at -6.