4 former winners will be in field for golf championship at Kebo Valley
Jul. 7—Four former winners will be among the 132 golfers who will tee off next Tuesday for the 102nd Maine Amateur Golf Championship at the Kebo Valley Golf Club in Bar Harbor, but defending two-time champion Cole Anderson from Camden won't be in the field.
It will be a three-day, 54-hole affair at Kebo, the oldest golf course in Maine and eighth oldest in the U.S. This will be the eighth time that it has hosted the Maine Amateur.
Anderson, who plays for the Florida State University Seminoles, will instead be playing in the Southern Amateur in Mississippi.
John Hayes IV of the Purpoodock Club in Cape Elizabeth won the tournament in 2015, Andrew Slattery from the Portland Country Club was the 2014 winner, and Ricky Jones from the Samoset Resort in Rockport and Ryan Gay from the Augusta Country Club are both three-time titlists.
Jones won it in 2013, 2003 and 2004, and Gay triumphed in 2010 — the last time the tournament was held at Kebo — as well as in 2011 and 2008.
Hayes was the runner up to Anderson last year by six strokes.
There will be players from 11 of Maine's 16 counties representing 40 different golf clubs. The Biddeford-Saco Country Club will have a tourney-high 15 golfers in the field followed by the Brunswick Golf Club's 11.
One of the Brunswick Golf Club players is University of Connecticut standout and Big East Rookie of the Year Caleb Manuel, who won the 36-hole Downeast Metro Amateur by firing a tournament-record 12-under par 129 at Kebo and the Bangor Municipal Golf Course including a four-under 66 over Kebo's 6,131-yard layout.
Manuel, who won last year's Maine State Golf Association's Junior Tournament, will be paired with Hayes, the MSGA Mid-Amateur tourney winner in 2020, and Minot's Will Kannegieser, the Match Play champ. They will kick off the tourney at 7 a.m.
