Jeff Lankford putts, as McGwire Owen and Chris Owen watch.

 

Runners-up Chris and McGwire Owen.

 

By Mike London
mike.london@salisburypost.com

SALISBURY — N.C. State junior McGwire Owen plopped down on the family couch on Monday night in front of the television and still was barely moving by Tuesday.

“He’s exhausted,” his father and golfing partner Chris Owen explained with a chuckle. “Says he might be ready to play golf again by December.”

The annual Crowder-Dorsett Labor Day 4-Ball Golf Tournament at the Country Club of Salisbury can have that effect on people. There’s an overload of intense, high-level golf in a three-day period, from Saturday through Monday. Throw in sticky humidity, torrents of rain and a suspension of play on Sunday evening, and it became even more of a grinding test of wills than usual. Even for the 20-somethings, legs felt as weighty as anvils by Monday afternoon’s final round of matches.

The Owenses, a local father/son team of an early-20s son and a late-40s dad who has enjoyed a sensational summer of golf, tore it up in qualifying. They were medalists with a 65. They had a scintillating tournament run, but they finished second.

The Owenses were running on fumes and up against legends in Monday afternoon’s finale, and Jeffrey Lankford and Uly Grisette, who live 4 miles apart in northern Davie County, still are who they are.

They have somehow made time stand still when they’re on a golf course. They keep telling Father Time to go away. Not today; not today.

If you do the math, the birth certificates state that Lankford and Grisette are 60 and 58, respectively, but they still play like 30-year-old touring pros. They have a splendid time on the course. They always draw rave reviews as pleasant, engaging opponents, but make no mistake, they are there to kick butts.

Grisette and Lankford broke the tournament record for oldest winning team (combined ages) in the Open Division in 2023. Now they’ve made more history. They’ve beaten themselves.

Golf is that rare sport in which a 60-year-old can still perform close to his peak. The Davie duo has lost a few yards off the tee over the years, but they teamed to breezily win Monday’s final 5 and 4.

“We’re going to have to move to the Senior Division (55+) one of these years, but not just yet,” Lankford said cheerfully. “We love the challenge, love playing those younger players, even though some of them are driving it past us now.”

The team of Lankford/Grisette is the first repeat champion in the Labor Day 4-Ball’s Open Division since Blake Wray/Lee Frick in 2007 and 2008. When they won in 2008, Wray and Frick were the first repeating team since the 1980s. In other words, it doesn’t happen much.

“McGwire was pretty down that we didn’t win,” Chris Owen said. “But I couldn’t have been prouder of him or the way that he played. This was his first time playing in the Championship Flight, and he finished second. That’s fantastic. This was my fourth time in the Championship Flight and I’ve won one (in 2014 with Ken Clarke), so I know how hard it is to win this tournament and how hard it is to qualify for the Championship Flight. And once McGwire started looking up what Lankford and Grisette have done in golf, he felt better. He understood who we were playing against.”

Lankford graduated from Davie County High in 1982 and was a first team All-America at N.C. State in 1986. He played in many PGA events in his heyday. As a teaching pro for years, he made it a habit of winning a long string of club pro championships, even at the regional level.

Grisette came along two years behind Lankford at Davie, and they helped make Davie a contender for state championships. Grisette won the North Carolina Amateur in 1985. He won the North & South Amateur in 1988. Grisette missed securing his PGA Tour card by a single stroke in 1993. Like his playing partner, he has teed off in PGA events. After he filed to reclaim his amateur status, he won the North Carolina Mid-Amateur in 2008 and 2010.

Grisette and Lankford haven’t played together much since their days as teammates at Davie and N.C. State, but they reconnected last year as a winning Labor Day team. They were a bit stunned by the magnitude of the Labor Day event in Salisbury, the level of interest, the level of attendance and the caliber of golf.

“We shot 66 in qualifying last year and were seeded fifth,” Grisette said. “One team (former Salisbury High stars Eric Edwards and Alex Nianouris) shot 61 in qualifying. That was pretty eye-opening. You look around, and you see a lot of guys with nice swings, guys who look like scratch golfers. You don’t see that many guys like that at most clubs. There are a lot of 35-year-olds here who can shoot par. They said there were a lot of former Labor Day champions who were in the Second Flight.”

As defending champs, Grisette and Lankford didn’t have to qualify this time. They watched as qualifying scores came in. It took at least a 69 in qualifying to make the 16-man Championship Flight.

The path to the title was stressful for Grisette and Lankford in 2023. That tournament is part of Labor Day lore for the shots that were struck on No. 17  in a deadlocked semifinal between Grisette and Lankford and local favorites Charlie Barr and Josh Brincefield, the 2022 champions.

Barr hit a magnificent shot off the tee on No. 17, a long par 3 of over 210 yards. Barr stuck it 4 feet from the pin. The crowd roared. With the pressure on, Lankford put his tee shot 3 feet below the hole. From there, he made the birdie putt that proved decisive.

“A few people mentioned that shot, but I didn’t have to make any shots quite like that this year,” Lankford said with a laugh. “The thing is when you’ve got a partner like Uly, there’s not a whole lot of pressure to make great shots. You know Uly is going to be around the hole on every hole. He makes it fun and easy.”

The path to a Labor Day crown will never be a piece of cake, but Lankford and Grisette were never in serious trouble on their repeat venture. They were never down more than one hole and led from the start in most of their matches.

“Very wet fairways early on Monday, but the course was in good shape and we were putting two balls in play on every hole,” Lankford said. “That’s the key to four-ball match play.”

The Davie veterans advanced with a 3 and 2 win against Ryan Burke/Cade Cranfield in Saturday’s first round.

They were one of the teams able to complete their quarterfinal match on Sunday, a 2 and 1 victory against Tyler Mulkey/Jordan Taylor. Being able to finish on Sunday would prove advantageous. Weather halted and suspended 38 other matches.

Most of the moments of truth for Lankford and Grisette came when they faced the Adams brothers, Frank and Russ, who are in their mid-40s, in a Monday morning semifinal.

Frank Adams, a former East Carolina golfer, was a qualifier for the 2016 U.S. Open and played in pro events for years before reclaiming amateur status.

Russ Adams was a star shortstop for the UNC Tar Heels and a first-round draft pick who played in the major leagues. He swings a golf club nearly as well as he once swung a bat.

“You can’t look ahead in a tournament like this, where every team in the Flight is a threat, but when I saw the draw, I felt like we’d probably play Frank and Russ in the semifinals,” Lankford said. “I’ve played with Frank before, and I know what kind of athlete Russ is. I told Uly they would be hard to beat.”

That proved to be the case. It was a 1-up victory for Grisette and Lankford.

“Uly made a tough 25-foot putt to win 10 for us,” Lankford said. “That was big. I think that was the turning point. Uly and I both hit bad shots on 14. That was one of the two bogeys we had in four rounds. The other one was on 12 in one of the early matches, but with the tee box set way back, that wasn’t a bad bogey. That’s a tight hole.”

The path to the final for the Owens was perilous. They were the 2 seed, but were in a struggle right away with 15th-seeded Wesley Cline/Jordan Branch in the first round.

“McGwire won that one for us,” Chris Owen said. “Birdie on 18, and then he birdies the first playoff hole to keep us alive and the second playoff hole to decide the match.”

The Owens had a solid lead in their Sunday quarterfinal with Terrain Gill/Andre Robinson, 3-up with four holes to play, but that’s when action was halted by weather.

So the Owens had to come back at 7:30 a.m. on Monday. They played the 15th, 16th and 17th and held on to win their quarterfinal, 2 and 1.

After a 30-minute break, their semifinal opponents were Ryan Szalay and young Salisbury star John McCoy.That’s a third-seeded team that shot 67 in qualifying. The Owenses came back from a steep, five-hole deficit to pull out that match on the 18th to reach the final.

“We played three holes, and then we played 18, and then we went back out there for the final,” Chris Owen said. “We had used it all up by then and the championship match was the worst we played in the tournament. But having said that, Uly and Jeff are great players. They hit it in play. Then they hit it on the green. They don’t give you any openings to win a hole. One of them always has a birdie putt and sometimes both.”

Lankford and Grisette were in control from the outset. They were pleased that McGwire Owen was attending the same university where they had helped elevate the golf program, but they did what they had to do.

“We were always inside them on the green,” Lankford said. “Kept the pressure on them.”

“Jeff and I just kept dinking it and chunking it up there close and we made a few putts, and we were lucky enough to win again,” Grisette said. “There were so many really good players in this tournament, and it’s such a tremendous event, from the community, to the organizers, to the sponsors to the volunteers to the people who work on the course. Winning it again with Jeff does mean a lot. Beating all those young guys who can really play means a lot.”

The tournament started with 160 teams. Their legs were weary, but the Davie guys were still standing at the end.

They’ll be another year older, but the Davie dynamos plan to be back as the team to beat in 2025. There hasn’t been a Labor Day Open Division three-peat since Ed Rabon Jr. and Mallory McDaniel did it from 1982-84, but don’t bet against them.

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The team of Jim Christy/Robert Shoaf won the Super Senior Flight for ages 65-up. Christy joined the short list of champs who have won all three divisions.

They won against John DeRhodes/Mallory McDaniel who beat them in the finals last year.

Chuck Valley/Steve Honeycutt won the consolation final over qualifying medalists Doug Glenn/Greg Chappell.

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