Another tough blow to local golf.

Teeing off to start the final round of the AAGA Open at Norton Country Club.

I still read the newspaper for which I toiled for some 42 years or so, although digitally rather than ink-and-paper -- hey, it's the 2020s -- and I got a huge shock when I reached Monday morning's lead editorial on the Opinion page.

The big news of the day, beyond saving Capron Park Zoo in Attleboro and the local "No Kings" protests that will surely be mocked by the irritating cadre of right-wing zealots in this corner of southeastern Massachusetts, was that the Attleboro Area Golf Association's annual "City Open" tournament -- which hasn't been conducted within the city limits for several years now because many local courses have disappeared -- was welcoming Ledgemont Country Club of Seekonk into its fold. But the reason was even more newsworthy.

It was partially because Norton Country Club, which has had a six-decade association with the AAGA and been host to many of the most memorable moments of the annual tournament as one of its founding sites, had severed its partnership with the local association.

The story actually broke Friday on the front sports page of The Sun Chronicle, a story I completely scanned past and missed when I viewed the online edition. At the time, writer Mike Kirby tried to get a comment from Norton Country Club management, but could not reach anyone before deadline. So the question remained unanswered: Why would Norton CC, one of the area's most revered patches of property to local golfers, bail out of a decades-long association with a group whose sole mission is to promote the growth of local golf?

After reading the editorial, I immediately reached out to someone I know that might have the answers. But since I'm no longer a "professional" journalist and not working for an accredited news-gathering operation, I told this individual that any information that was shared would remain just between us. So while I may know a little more as I write this than I did a couple of hours ago, it's my fervent hope that The Sun Chronicle will continue to strive to get on-the-record answers.

OK, I understand that some of you that read this may feel that this issue doesn't really amount to more than a hill of beans compared to the many other issues facing the world today -- war in Iran, rising gasoline prices, corruption at the highest levels of government to start, let alone how bad the traffic will be in Foxboro when 60,000 soccer fans with no knowledge of the area converge upon Gillette Stadium (screw this "Boston Stadium" nonsense) about 30 minutes before each World Cup game is supposed to start.

Besides, more people get upset when Sydney Sweeney's bra size is misreported in the national media than anything else that's happening. Fake news!

But for someone that tried to be a golfer at one time in his life, and enjoyed covering it for the local newspaper for decades, the erosion of the Attleboro Area Golf Association's championship tournament to just three different sites in four days is worrisome. The demise of several golf courses in the area is already a trend that may be irreversible, and Norton Country Club's decision to turn its back on the AAGA may be a blow from which the association won't be able to recover.

Great personal moments. There weren't many.

I tried to learn how to play golf in the 1980s and maintained a playing relationship with the sport into the 2000s, before both the cost of playing and the pain in my knees started spiraling out of control. I was totally self-taught, managed to break 100 legitimately a few times (without Donald Trump's foot wedge tactics or his taking "gimme" putts from 20 feet out), and even popped in an eagle at Hillside Country Club in Rehoboth from about 110 yards out, choking up on a 7-iron from an elevated fairway lie and making a perfect swing to send the ball on a direct line from there to the pin.

I should have stopped playing then and there. Best stroke of my life, and I knew right then I wasn't ever going to top it. 

While I knew I would never challenge for a berth in the City Open, I did want to get to know the game better. So for a couple of summers, I instituted a feature that appeared in the Sunday editions of The Sun Chronicle called "The Local Links." I'd approach the management of golf courses throughout the region and ask them if I could play a full round with a photographer in tow, and I'd describe the course and its unique challenges while our photog captured the natural beauty of the surroundings. I even offered to pay for the round, but most of the time, they let me play for free. 

It turned out to be one of our most popular recurring features, and it gave me the opportunity to play on a lot of courses on which I'd really have no business being otherwise. I played all sorts of different courses -- from the lush fairways of Highland Country Club in Attleboro, to the twisting turns of the compact layout at Wentworth Hills in Plainville, to the hacker's delights like Locust Valley in Attleboro and Sun Valley in Rehoboth. From those, and so many others, I learned that while golf may be tedious to watch on television to some individuals, playing it and playing it well was even more of a mental challenge than it was a physical one.

During that time, I did have a few favorite courses to play -- mostly the ones where I could get on quickly and play by myself. One was Easton Country Club (now owned by Stonehill College), which had a great pro shop and long and wide fairways whose toughest hazards were the mounds of goose poop that often couldn't be avoided. Another was Rehoboth Country Club, kind of a hidden gem that was relatively easy to play but had some very challenging holes among its 18. And it was always easy to get on the course there.

But my favorite was Norton Country Club -- even back when it was just a wet and wild nine-holer that loved to swallow my errantly-struck Titleist balls that disappeared into the swampy muck bordering the narrow fairways. Some of those balls, which weren't cheap, are probably still buried there.

Once Norton was expanded to 18 holes, it truly became the gem of our local golfing world -- at least until just a few forested feet away to the east, the spectacular TPC Boston layout was carved out of another patch of the disappearing Great Woods.

Golfers knew we were coming with this display.

For a while, local golf was booming. TPC Boston hosted the annual Deutsche Bank Championship, bringing the best names in the game to our little corner of the world. Meanwhile, Peter Gobis and I covered the absolute shit out of the AAGA Tournament every year, approaching it as if it was the U.S. Open. Four days, four different courses, and we'd try to get every single angle and story we could out of the local championship. 

For the most part, the reader response was excellent -- because, after all, we were writing about hometown heroes. Gobis and I could be seen prominently while executing our duties, riding our free golf cart with Sun Chronicle logos plastered on it (although I did buy several polo shirts at every course as compensation).

Oh, yeah, we had a few critics. One was Ed Duckworth, a former Patriots beat writer for the Providence Journal that lived in our area, who used to needle me about how the paper would kick almost all other sports news from its pages over four days in August for a local golf tournament. He was probably just bustin' my chops, but I'm sure there were others that had no investment in the game and thus no interest.

But Gobis and I made the commitment. We often saw Marc Forbes. a gentleman's gentleman, make the triumphant march to the final hole at Highland to put the finishing touches on another of his 16 victories. We stood amid the fairways of Locust Valley, freezing our asses off because we chose to wear shorts on a day in which the temperature unexpectedly dropped into the 40s, watching John "Buck" Renner practically reach the green on a par 4 with his powerful drives. 

We watched Buck's son, Jim, totally dominate the Hillside course in 2002 on his way to a final-round 69 and his second tournament victory. And we saw Davis Chatfield, a diminutive lad from Bishop Feehan High School, stroll confidently down the 18th fairway at Foxborough Country Club to finish a 16-stroke victory in 2015, hitting in the 60s for three of the four rounds.

Jim Renner dominated the AAGA Open.

Jim Renner briefly reached the PGA Tour, and now Chatfield is there and showing great promise. Not bad for a couple of alumni of a local tournament that is approaching its 66th playing this August.

Alas, the times are not favoring local golf. 

Two of the original locations of the tournament. Highland and Locust Valley, are golf courses no more. Highland is a "nature preserve" whose immaculately manicured fairways have overgrown with weeds and scrub, with a few walking paths open to the public. Locust Valley is also as overgrown as it can get, although not much grew there in the summertime anyway. There are barely a few reminders of its past life as a popular golf course -- especially popular to legions of young golfers that used to sneak on and get in their licks just before sundown. Both are ticketed for future housing development.

Ditto for Heather Hill Country Club in Plainville. For years a popular place for wedding receptions, Heather Hill benefitted from the golf boom and expanded to 27 holes before the boom turned to bust. Again, housing development is the culprit -- a planned 384-unit development for residents 55 years of age and older.

Some courses continue to hang on, but it's far more expensive to have memberships because costs have risen to maintain the facilities. It's simple economics, and the lure of big bucks from developers is always nagging the owners to cash in their chips and get out of the golf business while the getting is good.

As a result, the Attleboro Open is no longer played within a five-mile radius of Attleboro.

Don't get me wrong, Ledgemont is a fine facility that will be a welcome addition to the AAGA rotation of Foxborough and Wentworth Hills. I don't think I played it during my "The Local Links" tour, but I an pretty sure it was on my list before we discontinued the series. An aerial view of the course is very appealing.

Ledgemont may even give the final threesomes a bit of a break. As it will be the only course played after the two-round cut at Wentworth Hills, the final competitors will be able to iron out their third-round mistakes and approach the final day with confidence borne from their previous experience.

Davis Chatfield is on the rise.

But it's clearly a reflection of changing times that the AAGA Open is fighting for its life. It does irk me when I hear stories about how members at some of the courses are pissed off at the AAGA for taking charge of their precious patches of turf for maybe 12 hours on a summer weekend day. One friggin' day at the clubhouse bar once a year apparently can't be set aside for an organization that promotes local golf, conducts several different tournaments for local golfers of all ages and genders, and awards scholarships to young competitors who might be interested in pursuing further development of the game in college. In fact, many youthful participants in the AAGA Open have gone on to play in college. I know. I've interviewed them. 

Davis Chatfield is an excellent example of the kind of golfer that the AAGA helped send to the rest of the golf world, whether it was to Notre Dame or the PGA Tour, where he has proven himself to be an on-the-rise talent. I'm sure he would have found a way to this level of accomplishment if the AAGA Open didn't exist, but I have to believe that exposure to a tournament environment at a young age, regardless of the competition level, is helpful toward the education of a player learning the ropes.

I cherish this award.

I just get the feeling that this is now all at risk. Local golf needs an advocate, and the AAGA has been just that. Bob Gay and Bobby Beach, the co-presidents of the association, have worked tirelessly to promote the game. So have all the members of the AAGA committee. And I don't mind telling you, I'm proud as hell that a hacker like me could be inducted into the AAGA Hall of Fame, as I was in 2010 along with Gobis and North TV executive director Peter Gay, for our assistance in promoting the game locally.

I'd really love to hear the explanation from those in charge of Norton Country Club why they feel their course is now too important, or can't be bothered, to take one day out of their so-precious schedule to host a popular local tournament that has been a centerpiece of its very existence for more than 60 years. They'd probably tell me it was none of my business, so I'll leave that task to the professional sportswriters -- but I assure you, it's a question I eventually want to hear answered.

MARK FARINELLA still has a bag filled with expensive Titleist irons in a closet, but they need re-gripping and there's some rust on the shafts -- just like their owner. Make him an offer at theownersbox2020@gmail.com.