Time is up after teeing up for 60th time

They say that all good things must end some day.

Chad and Jeremy told us that in their 1964 smash hit “A Summer Song.”

And so it was for a group of guys, mostly from Hamilton, who have gathered every summer for 60 years to play their own tournament, an event they called The Sauble Beach Invitational.

It was called that because a couple of the guys had their cottages there and that’s where they played it initially before moving down the road to Port Elgin and the Saugeen Golf Club.

You really did have to be invited and most of those much sought after invitations went to friends and co-workers at Procter and Gamble or Bathurst Containers two long-gone Hamilton businesses.

“We limited the number to a max of 24,” says Earl Robinson, who joined in year 10 and has become the tournaments’ record keeper and historian.

Four of the originals, Jim Cherriere, Ken Wall, Bruce Fowkes and Jack Tippler, were there a couple of weeks ago when they teed it up at Saugeen Golf Club for the 60th and final time.

The fact that two of the players had to leave their hospital beds to make it confirmed what the organizers already knew.

“We decided after last year that this would be our final year,” said Robinson who noted that the age and declining health of some of the participants was obviously a factor.

But as one friends-and-family golf tournament winds down, another begins.

At Flamborough Hills this week on the second anniversary of the passing of Dan Pope, family, friends and business associates teed it up in the first tournament to honour his memory.

The main organizer of the event was his son Brent. The name Brent Pope will resonate with local hockey fans. He played four years in the Ontario Hockey League, four years in the Edmonton Oilers farm system and then played, coached and managed another 18 years of professional hockey in England and Wales.

“I moved home two years ago and I wanted to reconnect with the community around Copetown where I grew up,” said Pope, “And I thought what better way to do it than create a golf tournament to honour my dad.”

The tournament raised $1,000 for the Copetown United Church.

Friends and family tournaments, large and small, are one of the things that makes golf such a unique sport. •••

Whole-in-one: Three aces were shot recently at Chippewa Creek, two on the eighth hole of the Red Falcon nine; Bob Walker from 168-yards with a six iron and Bob Pettigrew from 126yards with a seven wood.

John Bronson also aced the fourth hole of the Gold Eagle nine from 116-yards with a 22-degree hybrid.