Fortunes haven’t been kind to non-local teams competing at the Country Club of Greenfield’s Invitational Four-Ball over the years.
In the past decade alone, just one team with no ties to Franklin County came to the storied event and broke through with a victory. That was teenagers Jake Skole (Longmeadow) and Dan Fanion (Westfield), who took home the 2008 edition of the event.
Since then, however, every Invitational has been won by teams with at least one member belonging to a local club. More often than not, those ties are to the host CCG, and that was again the case Sunday, when CCG’s Brodie Conant and partner Max Major of Rutland (Vt.) Country Club won their second consecutive title.
Although Conant and Major’s second straight win was the biggest story to come out of the four-day event, a major storyline also came in the form of a non-local duo that pushed them to the brink. Conant and Major held off third-seeded Derek Yvon and Brian Foley, 3 and 1, in the Sunday title match.
The Springfield-area tandem made their presence known in a big way over the weekend. In Thursday’s qualifying round, they shot 64, good enough for the second-lowest total behind medalists KC Finley and Cody Booska’s 62.
Three match-play victories from there, all lasting until the 18th hole or longer, put Yvon and Foley into the championship match against Conant and Major.
“Our first match (Round of 16) went to 19 holes and from there, nothing got any easier,” explained Foley, who plays out of Springfield Country Club. “There were some unbelievable moments. The level of competition and the level of play from these teams was quite high.”
The duo was a part of perhaps the most competitive match of the entire tournament in Saturday’s semifinals. Matched up against Finley and Booska, the teams traded blow after blow on the back 9, with every single hole being birdied by one side or the other (often by both). In the end, Yvon and Foley survived, spoiling a highly-anticipated rematch of last year’s final between Finley-Booska and Conant-Major.
It was Yvon and Foley’s first trip to Greenfield for the Invitational. Foley’s experience playing at CCG in the New England Amateur qualifier in June peaked his interest in returning, and he phoned his regular partner Yvon, who plays out of the palatial GreatHorse in Hampden, to tell him about the Four-Ball.
The two have been mainstays in the western Massachusetts sporting community for a long time. Yvon graduated from Cathedral High School in 2002 after a standout athletic career (golf, basketball, baseball), and he continued on at Springfield College, where he was a two-sport star playing basketball and baseball. Yvon scored over 2,000 points during his collegiate career on the hardwood before graduating in 2007, ultimately earning him an induction into the school’s Hall of Fame in 2016.
Foley is the long-time varsity ice hockey coach at Cathedral (now Pope Francis High School). The program has been the pinnacle of WMass high school hockey for years, consistently particpating in the Super 8 Tournament — the only WMass team with that distinction.
As for their golf games, they each serve specific roles within the team. Foley leads off in the Four-Ball format, usually driving his tee shot down the heart of the fairway. That sets up the big-hitting Yvon, who can take more chances with a safe shot already in play.
Yvon’s distance enabled him to reach most of the par 5’s in two shots at CCG, while Foley’s accuracy had him putting for birdies on many occasions. That combination worked well, leading them into the championship match despite having little knowledge of the course before Thursday.
In addition to their strong play, Yvon and Foley were also big hits with the rest of the field. After falling in the semifinals, Finley and Booska followed the championship match amongst the horde of golf-cart riders. They were quite complimentary of the Springfield-area duo, often commenting to the gallery about how nice they were to play against.
That’s what the event has long been about — camaraderie. After falling in the finals when Major sunk a birdie putt on 17 from just off the green, Yvon and Foley were still all smiles. As they talked on the green just minutes afterward, they lauded the event and said they’d be back next year. While the streak of local teams winning the Invitational continued, that should once again be pushed to the brink in 2018.