Nehansic Valley’s Kevin Foley held off Arcola’s Morgan Hoffman by one shot to win the Ike Championship yesterday at Mountain Ridge Country Club in West Caldwell, N.J. The victory is the first MGA title for Foley, who recently wrapped up an All-American sophomore season at Penn State University.

Mike Dougherty was on the scene while continuing to track the circus that is the Knicks during NBA draft week. Here is his article that ran in today’s paper.

Max Buckley, last year’s Journal News Westchester/Putnam golfer of the year, finished in a tie for sixth place. The Rye product is on an incredible run lately, recently winning the Westchester Amateur Championship as well. He will be playing for SMU next year.

Another former TJN player of the year, Michael Quagliano, shot a 3-under-par 68 in the second round to move up into fourth place.

Speaking of player of the year awards, I’m wrapping up my three stories (Westchester/Putnam boys and girls and Rockland boys) today. Who will win? The suspense will continue to build until the special All-Star section comes out July 11…

The second day of the Ike, one of the Metropolitan Golf Association’s three major championships, is well underway at Mountain Ridge Country Club in West Caldwell, N.J.

Nehansic Valley’s Kevin Foley, who just finished an All-American sophomore season at Penn State University, was the overnight leader after firing a 6-under-par 65 to tie a tournament record.

Several local players, including Russell Giglio (Sprain Lake), Max Buckley (Westchester Hills), Brian Bartow (Wykagyl) and Michael Quagliano (GlenArbor) made the cut and are in the hunt, though Foley will be tough to catch.

Golfers will play 36 holes today.

Here’s fellow Journal News team member Mike Dougherty’s story on day one that ran in today’s paper.

Yesterday, I had the privilege of covering the Guiding Eyes for the Blind Golf Classic. This was the 31st year of the event being held annually and for a second straight year, Giants’ quarterback and Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning was the host.

Well, Eli may have been the host for a second straight year, but this was his first since capturing a championship and instantly vaulting himself amongst this state’s all-time sports legends. And it showed.

The event had a record 450 participants/donors, who played in a golf outing that involved Eli as well as 14 of the best blind golfers in the world. It was such a big turnout that three courses (Mount Kisco Country Club, Whippoorwill Club and Fairview Country Club) had to be used to accommodate everyone.

It’s the largest fundraiser of the year for Guiding Eyes, one of the leading guide dog training centers in the country, which is based in Yorktown Heights. Ron Blackwell of Mauldin, S.C. won the prestigious Corcoran Cup, known as “The Masters of blind golf” early in the morning before the outing.

I covered this event once before and it’s amazing to see these blind golfers play. They play by the complete set of USGA rules, except they’re allowed to ground a club in a hazard. A coach helps with yardage, club selection and alignment by setting the club and then backs away for the swing.

Marvell Scott from ABC sports was on hand and he was filmed wearing a blind fold and trying to simulate the process. To his credit, he made pretty good contact with the driver, but then took off the blindfold and was told his ball had sailed out of bounds.

I was also impressed with Manning himself. First, he allowed me to briefly interview him one on one and then when we saw him out on the course, he re-did the interview so we could get it on camera for RNN. I met him at an Iona Prep sports dinner last year and he seems like a genuinely nice guy.

He can also crank a golf ball. On the 17th hole at Whippoorwill, after shaking hands, signing autographs and posing for pictures with a group, he took someone’s 9-iron and promptly skied a ball onto the left portion of the green from 154 yards.

I wish I had that kind of carry with my irons. Then again, he is 6-foot-4, 225 pounds. Oh yeah, and a world class athlete. I’ll keep dreaming…

I’ll have a few stories coming next week on the opening of the Pound Ridge Golf Club, the new daily fee layout in, you guessed it, Pound Ridge that was designed by the legendary Pete Dye.

I was out there last week, and the course, transformed from a former 9-hole facility, is indeed a spectacular place. But it’s still open for debate how many people will pay $235 for a round of golf (or better yet, how many people will remain married if they spent $235 for a round of golf. See, I probably would if not for the fear of my wife coming at me with a 3-wood soon after seeing the bill).

There’s obviously no shortage of money in this area, and the prevailing theory from owner Ken Wang is that many people would prefer to pay the $235 tab 20 times at Pound Ridge instead of forking over six figures to join a private club (Wang explained there’s a rough formula for coming up with a greens fee, and it’s essentially $10 for every million spent on construction. Since Pound Ridge cost in the neighborhood of $50 million to build, Wang said he’s actually charging less than he should).

There is some validity to that. But I also know the daily fee market has been saturated by overbuilding in the ‘90s, so there’s definitely a question of whether there’s enough demand at that price. Maybe because it’s Pete Dye and truly unique, enough people will be on board. I don’t know. I play the course for the first time next Tuesday, so I’ll let you know how it goes.

**************************************************************************************

And with Pound Ridge’s opening, it’s about time I got around to my Pound Ridge story from when I was 13 or 14. This was back when the course was a modest 9-hole facility, and my older brother had taken  me up there for my first round of golf.

There are a couple of things you need to know about this. Like I said, I had never played golf on a real golf course before so I didn’t own any clubs, and obviously I didn’t have much regard for golf etiquette since I remember I was wearing not a golf shirt but wrinkled shorts and a tie-dyed Allman Brothers Band T-shirt.

So naturally if you work at a golf course and some kid in a tie-dyed T-shirt (the Allman Brothers no less!) without any clubs walks up to the first tee, you have reason to be skeptical. And sure enough, before my brother and I tee off, the starter calls out to my brother, “Has he ever played golf before?”

I looked at my brother. My brother turned to the starter.

“He plays in school,” he said, which technically was true as long as you consider hitting whiffle balls on a football field playing golf in school.

This was enough for the starter to at least not persist with any more questions, but he was obviously watching intently when I pulled a driver from my brother’s bag and stuck a tee in the ground for the first time.

So there’s me, standing over the ball. There’s the starter with his arms folded disdainfully across his chest. And there’s my brother knowing we’re probably one worm-burner away from being told we have to take our business elsewhere (my brother was a tennis pro in the summer in those days and he got roughly one day off a month, so if we did get kicked off, he was probably done for the season).

Of course all of this is going through my head as I was standing over the ball, and yet somehow I take the club back, swipe through it, and send a drive down the center of the fairway maybe 200 yards out.

My brother, not wanting to betray how extraordinary this really is, simply said, “Good ball.” The starter, suddenly satisfied, retreated to his starter’s hut. I picked up the tee, hand the driver back to my brother, and start off down the fairway, all the while smiling like a fool.

Needless to say, I didn’t hit another ball in the air the rest of the day.

But that drive was still the most clutch shot I ever hit.

In a related story to today’s Tiger Woods bombshell is this report in which Retief Goosen says he was only joking when he said Woods was faking his knee injury during the Open.

“I was joking, really. I mean, how do I know? I never spoke to the guy,” Goosen said. “He’s got a sore knee, yes, and at the end of the day it’s a great achievement by Tiger winning his 14th major. But I wouldn’t really know how sore or not his knee was. Obviously if his knee was really bad he would have withdrawn. I won’t say I knew he was faking it. How would I know? Anyway, it’s great to see that he’s recovering well and that he’s back on form.”

The news is starting to filter its way onto web sites all across the country: Tiger Woods’ 2008 golf season appears over.

For the latest news, click here.

According to a report by The Golf Channel, Woods has decided to undergo season-ending knee surgery. The world’s No. 1 golfer suffered a stress fracture in his left tibia about two weeks before the U.S. Open and needs to have his ACL repaired.

The PGA Tour will certainly suffer having its top draw on the sidelines. In the meantime, those who thought he was faking it, including several of my colleagues, owe Mr. Woods an apology.

This makes his recent win over Rocco Mediate in a grueling 19-hole playoff even more amazing and only adds to his legend. Even with just one good leg, Tiger proved he’s still the best in the world. Only time will tell if this will derail his quest to shatter every record.

That hiss you’re hearing is the air going out of the rest of the golf season.

The AP’s indefatigable Doug Ferguson breaks the story of Tiger Woods now being forced to miss the rest of the year because he needs more surgery on his left knee.

And to think at one point I thought Woods may have been embellishing his injury a bit.

Was one U.S. Open title worth the rest of his season? Knowing Woods, I’d have to think so.

So why was this U.S. Open in particular so riveting?

Yes, there was the compelling theater of seeing the game’s greatest player stared down by a guy who could easily be your next door neighbor. There was the golf course set dramatically on the bluffs overlooking the Pacific Ocean. There was the energy emanating from grandstands overflowing with people, not all of whom sounded like they were drinking bottled water.

It was all that, but let’s not forget that it was also a course setup in which players were allowed to play. Make no mistake, Torrey Pines was confounding this week: tight fairways, dense rough, hard greens—all the standard fare we’ve come to expect from our crafty friends at the USGA. But as opposed to the usual back-up fest we see at U.S. Opens, here players were actually allowed to play something resembling golf.

I know a lot of people out there who would love to see an endless parade of triple bogeys at U.S. Opens, but most of these people simply didn’t get enough attention as children.

I prefer what we had today, the perfect balance of utterly difficult conditions, and two players occasionally capable of standing up to them.

If you didn’t like it, you’re probably in the minority (any moment now I should be inundated with e-mails from the PR department at NBC Sports telling me how this was the greatest telecast since the final episode of “MASH”). But don’t worry. Next year it’s off to Bethpage Black, where we can all be miserable together.

Tiger made an easy par on the 7th hole, the first sudden-death playoff hole, to win the 2008 U.S. Open.

For Tiger, it’s his 14th major, but perhaps his most memorable coming back from the knee surgery and making so many memorable putts/shots. Two days in a row he made birdie on the final hole to extend his tournament. Just an absolute machine.

What an amazing job by Rocco though. He fell behind early and then again by three, but never gave up. His spirited rally puts him in the Bob May category of pros that have actually challenged Tiger down the stretch at a major. I’m sure there are a lot of fans out there that would like to see that same kind of resolve from some of the other big names in golf.

What a week. Sadly, it is all over now (The tough venue, Johnny Miller’s commentary, the Yanni written NBC theme music). It’s hard to top the U.S. Open for great sporting events throughout the year.

As for this year’s version, not 72, not 90, but 91 holes were needed to finish this it in what will most certainly go down as one of the most memorable U.S. Opens of all-time. It’s only fitting that the player on the path to be the greatest of all-time wound up being the golfer to pull out a victory.

So a sudden-death playoff isn’t what the USGA wants after the fourth round, but it’s good enough following an 18-hole playoff? Interesting.

Anyway, Tiger Woods just drained a four-footer for birdie on the 18th hole to force a playoff with Rocco Mediate. He took his time studying the putt, but was there ever a doubt he would make it?

They are going to the par-4 7th for the playoff. Another interesting choice. Woods made birdie there today while Mediate made par. We’ll see what happens the second time around.