The ball never wavered. It dripped into the hole. Boom. A closing birdie for Barnes Blake. The icing on a torrid round’s cake.
Blake fist-pumped on his way to fetch the ball. The imperturbable golfer usually doesn’t. His groupmates, he said after the round Tuesday, made him.
The fist pump certainly was deserved. The putt sealed a 5-under-par 66 and an individual title at the Blue Devil Invitational, an event hosted by Westfield and contested at Echo Lake Country Club.
“Everything was pretty solid,” Blake said. “Nothing was amazing, but everything was just good enough to play a solid round.”
Westfield also nabbed the team title, shooting a 302 for its third tournament victory of the season, in its fourth try. The Blue Devils climbed past Blair Academy’s 308 and Hunterdon Central’s 309, as Tate Esler (4-over 75), Brody Esler (9-over 80) and James Dunn (10-over 81) rounded out the Westfield squad.
“This means a lot, because it’s our home invitational,” said head coach Ryan Daly. A second Westfield team, called, simply, “Westfield B,” carded a 321 to finish 9th out of 18 teams, a striking display of Westfield’s depth.
“We invite a lot of good teams here,” Daly added. “The win means a lot from that perspective.”
It meant a lot, too, from another perspective.
Affixed to every Westfield hat is a ribbon. The ribbons honor the memory of Henry Meacock, the WHS alumnus who tragically passed away in March while on spring break from Ohio State University.
Meacock played golf at Westfield. Played it well. Played it often at Echo Lake, his home course.
The Blue Devil Invitational marked the confluence of those three things—golf, Westfield, Echo Lake. On Tuesday, before the awards, the golfers and coaches observed a moment of silence.
“Echo Lake was his home course, he was a big part of the team, and it’s such a great way to honor him today with the win,” Blake said.
Blake, with his blistering play, proved foremost in honoring his former teammate.
Standing on the 18th fairway, Blake fitted his rangefinder to his eye, then pulled out a club. He waited—his drive was the closest to the green. So he stood there, in the looming shadow cast by a tree, the hole spooling out behind him.
Then he stuffed his approach shot pin high to 16 feet.
He waited some more. He was closest again.
Through the whole procedure, curious viewers perched on the balcony overlooking the 18th hole wondered what score Blake was about to post. He rolled in his putt, and finally word drifted up to the players and coaches waiting above. A 66. A bogey-free 66.
Incredulous chortles followed. The kind befitting an absurd score. The kind befitting Barnes Blake. The Montgomery coach, whose top golfer had been the clubhouse leader with a 2-under-par 69, smiled a defeated, almost amused, smile. Later, a golfer in the clubhouse stared at the television screen turned leaderboard, muttered, “66, Jesus,” and turned away, almost disgusted with Blake’s brilliance.
Blake won by 2 strokes, edging out Newark Academy’s Arjun Caprihan, who carded a 3-under-par 68. Caprihan went missing during the awards ceremony, marooned on the practice putting green, apparently engrossed in a putting contest with a competitor.
Blake’s win, though, appeared somewhat incongruous with recent results. In his last tournament, the Garden State Cup, a couple weeks ago, he posted a 12-over-par 84. He hadn’t broken par in his few competition rounds since. Not until Tuesday, of course.
“This round, I went out there and just kind of trusted the swing and didn’t try to do anything with it,” Blake said. “Just set up, visualized the shot, and then hit it, and it worked out pretty well today.”
Things worked out pretty well, too, for Jack Paterson, the Westfield sophomore who carded a 2-over 73 while competing for the “B” team. Paterson’s sterling performance earned him a spot in Wednesday’s conference tournament at Galloping Hills Golf Course, where he’ll play alongside Blake, Esler and Esler.
Paterson and Blake aside, most Westfield golfers exited the course seemingly a bit frustrated. Chattering golfers spoke of pure conditions and fast greens on this sunny but brisk day, scorable conditions that many players utilized. But the Westfield players, individually, seemed to feel their performances had lacked a touch of refinement.
“Barnes played outstanding today,” Daly said. “But I think those other [Westfield] guys will all tell you that they left a lot of strokes out there. So we’re not even firing on all cylinders yet.”
That’s a scary prospect for Westfield’s future opponents.
Dunn, playing in the final grouping, thinned his chip on the 18th hole, the ball skittering some 40 feet past the pin. But, before a balcony of watching golfers, he poured in the putt for par. A laugh and a cheer rose from the watching Blue Devils. Dunn responded with an exaggerated fist pump and a guffaw.
Inside the clubhouse, score tabulation still marched on, but the assembled onlookers had a rough idea of the score Dunn needed to secure a Westfield victory. So the Westfield golfers yelled questioningly down to Dunn, and Dunn yelled back up to them, and news of Dunn’s score filtered up. The Blue Devils, it quickly became clear, had won.
Smiles and awards and pictures.
But the day, for Westfield, began somewhat inauspiciously. Because Blake stole some golf balls. Sort of.
It was an accident, you see. Blake and his Westfield teammates typically receive a sleeve of Pro V1s before every round, so when Blake spotted a Pro V1 box on Tuesday, he grabbed a sleeve, assuming the balls belonged to Westfield.
Except the box, unbeknownst to Blake, had been set aside for the closest-to-the-pin winner. Westfield’s star golfer had unwittingly committed theft.
Five hours later, Blake extracted one of those accidentally stolen balls from the final hole. The balls, it seemed, worked rather well.
The closest-to-the-pin winner, it should be noted, received the full ensemble of 12 Pro V1s courtesy of an emergency shopping trip. Blake, of course, never intended to grab the wrong balls. The misunderstanding reached a quick resolution (though it remained useful fodder for a certain student journalist).
So on Wednesday, Westfield will wake, bright and early, before sunrise, to drive to Galloping Hills chasing more hardware. The Blue Devils aim to snare their fourth trophy of the season. Blake aims to maintain his scintillating play.
“I’m just gonna go out and do the same thing I did today,” Blake said.
So long as he plays the right ball.
