QUECHEE — The last full weekend of July passed without the playing of the annual Tommy Keane Invitational golf tournament, but the year 2021 will not.
The annual four-ball event that debuted in 1975 has long been a staple on the Upper Valley golf scene, but with the closing of Hanover Country Club it changed locations last summer, and this year moves not just its location but its date.
After a year at Lake Sunapee Country Club, the tournament that honors the memory of longtime Dartmouth College golf coach and Hanover CC pro Tommy Keane will be held this weekend on The Quechee Club’s par-72 Lakeland Course. Qualifying begins Friday, with match play Saturday and Sunday.
“Change is always hard, and we’re certainly sad that we don’t have the traditional Hanover Country Club setting, but with change comes a lot of good things, too,” said TKI committee chair Scott Peters. “We’re going to be playing a great golf course on an early fall weekend with the foliage starting up. Murphy Farm will be home base for everything — parking, food and drink, the scoreboard — and it’s a spectacular setting. The Quechee staff and facility have gone out of their way to open doors for us, and everyone is excited. It’s the perfect location for us.”
Despite the change of date ,the majority of the 64 competing teams are Tommy Keane veterans.
“I would say 90 to 95% are returning teams,” Peters said. “Inevitably, with a move to fall, there are going to be conflicts. There’s a teacher or two who can’t make it because it is fall, so we lost a few. But it’s a very, very familiar field.”
But it’s not the familiar old course. Relatively flat with water on most of the holes and large greens, the Lakeland layout isn’t at all like Hanover used to be.
“It almost has a Florida feel,” said Peters. “It’s got a lot of water and will have wind. It’s going to be a very different test.”
Quechee assistant Dustin Ribolini, who helped run the Keane beginning in 2012 while working as an assistant at Hanover, is curious about how it will play out on such a different kind of course.
“There were a lot of good players at Hanover, but it helped that people knew how to get around it,” he said. “This course is definitely tougher, so I think you are going to see scores a smidge higher and you may see some matches that end a little bit earlier.”
That wouldn’t be a bad thing given one of the biggest differences between late July and late September.
“With 128 players trying to play 36 holes Saturday with waning daylight, it could make it a little tricky toward the end, but we will make it work,” said Ribolini. “We have a great staff in place and have been preparing for this.”
TJ Anthoine, Quechee’s director of golf, doesn’t have Ribolini’s first-hand knowledge of the Keane, but like the others he’s excited about how it will play out.
“Working with the tournament committee, you can tell there’s so much passion about this event and how proud they are of it,” he said. “From our standpoint at Quechee, we’re trying to match their passion and love for this event to make it an extra special one and write a new chapter for the TKI.”