Golf: Bonacker’s Third State Trip

   Shooting rounds of 76 and 75 at the Indian Island golf course last week, Ian Lynch, who is to attend Colgate University in the fall, became, according to his coach, Claude Beudert, the first Bonacker to qualify for three state championships in the sport.

    Lynch, whose first-day score ranked him 10th among the county’s individual competitors going into the tourney’s second day, finished fifth, thus qualifying him to play in the state tournament this weekend at Cornell University.

    “He didn’t have any birdies on the second day,” Beudert said, “but he played consistently. He had a 37 on the front nine, moving up from 10th to fourth. It’s a par-72 course, not particularly difficult, but it has some length, and they can put the pins in some tough places. He had a 38 on the back nine. He bogeyed the last two holes. He was striking the ball well, but he didn’t putt well. Still, it’s the third straight year that he’s made the state tournament. Nobody’s ever done that before. Zach [Grossman, who’s now a sophomore at Skidmore] didn’t make it as a seventh grader, he did in the eighth grade, and then he made it again as a senior.”

    Another Bonacker, Matt Griffiths, a junior who shot a 79 the first day, shot a 90 on the second largely because he three-putted eight holes.

    Team-wise, East Hampton, as reported last week, won the division title — its fifth in a row — which, said Beudert, “took some of the sting out of finishing third in the fall season, behind Southampton and Pierson. Before that, we’d won 12 league championships in a row.”

    Over all, the Bonackers finished ninth among the 50 schools entered in the county tourney.

    Besides Lynch’s 76 and Griffiths’s 79, East Hampton’s other scorers in the divisional competition were Andrew Winthrop, with a 94, Stephen Kane, with a 94, and Josue Palacios, with a 95.

    “Before the tournament, Jason Jeffries at Maidstone gave them a lesson. He’s been working quite a bit with Ian,” said Beudert, who added that “we had two good weeks of practice going in.”

    “We lose Ian and Andrew to graduation,” the coach said in reply to a question. “It will be hard to replace Ian, who’s also this year’s valedictorian. He was a big winner at the senior academic awards night. He’s worked very hard. When he started playing golf for me in the seventh grade his bag weighed more than he did — he weighs as much as his golf bag now. One of the parents at the awards dinner was heard to say to his son, ‘Work as hard as Ian if you ever want to work to get something.’ ”

    “He’s a fine young man — he’s respected throughout the county.”