25 Years Ago in Bonac Sports 07.07.11

June 5, 1986

    In an extremely eventful week for the East Hampton High School boys tennis team, the Bonackers clinched the first outright League Seven championship the school has ever enjoyed with a 6-1 victory over Mercy here on May 27; dominated the Conference Four tournament, which ended with all-East Hampton finals in singles and doubles, and on Tuesday defeated Commack South 5-2 in the first round of the Suffolk County team tournament.

    . . . East Hampton wound up with a 13-1 record in League Seven, its only loss in league play coming to Southampton. The team’s overall record as of Tuesday was 17-2. The league championship was the first East Hampton has won since 1976, the first year of John Goodman’s tenure as coach. “We tied Miller Place for the championship in ’76,” said Goodman, “but I think I’m right in saying that we’ve never won it outright before.”

June 12, 1986

    The windswept moorlands of the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, whose gabled clubhouse is the oldest in America, and on whose rolling terrain the second United States Open was played in pastoral seclusion, will be unveiled for all the world to see next week as the United States Golf Association returns after a 90-year absence.

    How will the powerful pros do on these rather wild links in whose calf-high rough can be found hudsonia, blue flag iris, bearberry, and rosa rugosa? It all depends apparently on whether the wind blows and from which direction.

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    “I’m looking forward to it,” Alex White, Shinnecock’s superintendent, said of the Open. “It’s something that is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Ninety years ago was the last time they played it here, you know. It was on a short course. There were only a few dozen pros in the entire country then, and there were just the members as spectators.”

    Would he be greeting the masses of spectators next week? “No, they’ll fend for themselves. The clubhouse will be for members only; the professionals will use the locker rooms.”

    The best place to watch the tournament would be in front of one’s TV set, Mr. White said in parting.

June 19, 1986

    Claude Beudert saw God the other day. He saw him up close, on the 14th tee of the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club course, the scene this week of the U.S. Open. Claude and I had been ambling over the back nine late Saturday afternoon in between downpours, figuring we were the only ones crazy enough to be out there, when, from the 12th green we saw a clutch of color move off from the 13th tee.

    The small gathering had a certain purposefulness to it, and immediately we began to wonder who the golfer, or golfers, might be. “It was the person I hoped it was,” said Beudert a day later, still somewhat stunned that he had been for five holes in the company of Jack Nicklaus, “the greatest golfer of all time.”

    “It’s like watching God,” said the East Hampton High School teacher and coach.

    “Like watching God in the rain,” I said, as we moved along, sodden, under a large Wimbledon umbrella.

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    Another banner year in sports was celebrated at an awards dinner at East Hampton High School on June 11. The 600-student school, which continues to experience an impressive 60 percent turnout for the 19 varsity sports it offers, enjoyed league championships during the past school year in girls tennis, coached by Jim Nicoletti, boys basketball, coached by Ed Petrie, wrestling, coached by Jim Stewart, and boys tennis, coached by John Goodman.

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    “I was in total control,” Raymond Floyd, the winner of the U.S. Open played this past week at the Shinnecock Hills Golf Club, said. “I was walking at a speed in sync with my golf swing. I felt together. I was never upset, and I never let anything bother me. I stuck to my game plan and didn’t deviate.”

June 26, 1986

    Paul Hamilton of Coram won the Race Against Drug Abuse five-kilometer road race in Sag Harbor Saturday in 16 minutes and 10 seconds, edging Dr. Robert Semlear of Sag Harbor, the runner-up, in 16:47.