State Women’s Open tourney at TCC in May

Golf is here. The Masters is only two weeks or so away and local clubs are making plans for the 2017 season while members wait for the snow to melt.

The first big flash to land on this desk: the Connecticut Women’s Open tournament, the big women’s event in the state, will be contested May 30 and 31 at Torrington Country Club. Dick Weigold is in charge of arrangements from the club’s end and will be working with the CSGA to help TCC put on a spectacular tournament.

“Wiggy’’ is the guy to do it. A champion golfer who still swings a mean five-iron, he is

devoted to the club. This will be fun to watch.

Side Street: Weigold has been voted into the Torrington High School Athletic Hall of Fame and will be inducted in ceremonies April 23 at the Elks Club.

Said Wiggy: “I didn’t expect this after being out of THS for 57 years.’’

I haven’t seen the list of the others who will share the H of F honors with him on that night, but I hope to get hold of it forthwith.

The Masters has always signaled the beginning of summer to me. As a Hartford Courant sports writer, I attended and covered 10 of them. There is simply no sports event quite like it. My first, and my firstever look at Augusta National, was in 1970. That tournament went an extra day, Billy Casper beating Gene Littler in an 18hole playoff. That’s the way they did it at that time, instead of immediate sudden death.

This was the Golden Era of golf in terms of personalities, not prize money, which has now reached absurd amounts. Weekly winners of today’s PGA events routinely collect well over one million dollars. Whoa.

Casper was not a colorful player; nor, with his large stomach, did he look the part of champion athlete. But he was every inch a champion and the record shows it. A Golf Hall of Famer, he won 51 PGA tournaments, including three majors. He is the only four-time winner of what used to be known as the GHO and before that, the ICO and is now the Travelers.

He would probably have been accorded more attention had his career not paralleled those of Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player, known as “The Big Three.’’ They were rivals and all three were big winners who enjoyed the spotlight. All were immensely popular among golf fans. Palmer had charisma fairly dripping out of every pore, Nicklaus embraced the Golden Bear image and was the ultimate family man and Player, the South African, while smaller in stature, was a physical fitness fanatic with a glib tongue and a fabulous golf game.

Casper, who died at 83 in 2015, simply did not fit that mold, and that was fine with him. He liked who and what he was and enjoyed pruning the trees in the apricot and peach orchards on his extensive Utah property and living, when possible, the country life.

But he was not what writers called good copy. A joke about Casper circulating around various tournament press tents used to be: “A car pulled up in front of the clubhouse and out stepped . . . nobody.’’

Casper’s most famous victory came in the 1966 U.S. Open at the Olympia Club, when he came from seven strokes behind in the last nine holes to tie Palmer and then beat Arnie in the 18-hole playoff the following day.

Littler’s persona was similar to Casper’s. He was subdued and unostentatious. Golf writers, who love color and wisecracking (see Lee Trevino) were not particularly pleased to be held over in Georgia for a playoff between two of the tour’s mild-mannered competitor. The two gentleman golfers teed off the next day and produced a very bland playoff, Casper dominating and winning.

The last Masters I attended was the dramatic Nicklaus victory in 1986 when Jack charged on the fourth day to become the oldest man ever to win the tournament, at 46. Oh boy, what a kick.

I’ll be very happy to see the return of the Masters and summer even though the winter has not been a bitter one here in the Northwest Corner.