Korda

Scotch Valley Country Club, which boasts one of the best-conditioned courses in all of central Pennsylvania, announced that long-time greens superintendent Tim Wilk has recently transitioned into semi-retirement.

Wilk, who began his career in the early 1980s at places like Fox Chapel in Pittsburgh and Chestnut Ridge, accepted his position at Scotch Valley way back in 2003.

After more than two decades of fine work, Wilk began mentoring new course superintendent Chris Doyle in recent months. The transition phase is now completed, and Wilk is set to remain on the Scotch Valley staff on a part-time basis.

The club recently posted a glowing “thank you” to Wilk on its Facebook Page for his tremendous contributions over the past 23 years.

Any local golfer who’s played the Scotch Valley course during the same time period should be equally thankful for Wilk’s outstanding work.

Eyes on Korda

The biggest tournament in women’s golf, the Women’s U.S. Open, will crown a new champion this weekend at Riviera Country Club in southern California.

Last year’s Open winner was Sweden’s Maja Stark, who won her title at Erin Hills in Erin, Wisconsin. Stark will be back to defend her victory, but most eyes this week will be on World No. 1 golfer Nelly Korda.

Korda, a three-time major champion, has been on a tear so far this season, but the Women’s U.S. Open has eluded her to this point in her career.

Here’s hoping America’s best female golfer performs well and has a chance to win this prestigious title on Sunday afternoon.

Lost and found

Ever wonder how many golf balls are hit into any particular, strategically-placed water hazard? Golfers at my home course, Iron Masters, found out after they were recently approached by a golf ball diving company based out of Virginia.

After a brief negotiation, the diving company agreed to pay a small fee for every golf ball they retrieved from the bottom of the pond that guards Iron Masters’ 11th hole.

After several hours of work that included two divers and a third person manning the mechanical scooping equipment, a massive pile of soiled balls was accumulated before each one was scrubbed, sorted and counted. After a full day’s work, the final tally of reclaimed balls came to an amazing total of 23,230 golf balls.

According to Iron Masters head pro Rick Grubb, the diving company typically discards about 50% of the reclaimed balls as unusable, 30-35% are resold as range balls and about 15-20% are nice enough to be repackaged and sold as premium used golf balls.

On a side note: although it’s likely there are many more golf balls in the water hazard that guards Iron Master’s 13th hole, divers could not reclaim balls in that area due to the extreme water depths that resulted from 19th century iron-ore mining).

45 years ago

During the first week in June of 1981, Hollidaysburg’s Mark Kleiner defeated Altoona’s Scott Kline to capture the Scotch Valley Invitational Match Play tournament.

Kline, a 19-year-old Clemson student at the time, defeated Mark Papalia, Dave Treese and Mark Coho before falling to the 20-year-old Kleiner (a student at Penn State) in the finals.

Ken Love covers local golf for the Mirror. He can be reached at GLTR777@atlanticbb.net.