By Kim J. Harmon

C

ROMWELL – Well, if sunstroke didn’t have you flopping on your back with a towel wrapped around your neck, then you must have had a pretty good week at the TPC at River Highlands for all the stuff that was going on for the 50th anniversary Canon Greater Hartford Open (GHO).

That is, if you went.

And why wouldn’t you? The 50th anniversary Past Champions Pro-Am on Monday, the Celebrity Long Drive Contest on Tuesday, the Celebrity Pro-Am on Wednesday, and the actual tournament from Thursday through Sunday made for a thrilling – and entertaining – week of golf in Cromwell.

The TPC at River Highlands was built in 1928, created by Robert Ross and Maurice Kearney. It has some of the most challenging - and most picturesque - holes in golf . . . from the 460-yard par-4 fourth hole and the 223-yard par-3 fifth hole to the 296-yard par-4 15th hole and the 420-yard par-4 17th hole.

And the course was packed all week long despite the blazing hot summer temperatures.

The week started with the Past Champions Pro-Am on Monday, June 24.

The tournament has a rather varied history - starting back in 1952 when it was just a little tournament called the Insurance City Open (sponsored by the Hartford Jaycees after a turtle race in 1951 proved to be disappointing). It became the Greater Hartford Open in 1967, and the Sammy Davis Jr Greater Hartford Open in 1973. Canon began its affiliation with the tournament in 1985.

Arnold Palmer won the ICO_in 1956 and earned less than $4,000 (this year’s champion, Phil Mickelson, earned almost $560,000) but it was one of the first of some 60 tournament championships in a long and storied career.

And Palmer was the main attraction on Monday as he teed it up with other past past champions of the tournament . . . like David Frost, Sam Snead, Paul Azinger, Billy Casper, Lee Trevino and Hubert Green. Besides the tournament, there was a shoot-out exhibition on the 18th and a closest to the pin contest.

Then on Tuesday came the Celebrity Long Drive contest at the practice range. While many of the pros were running through the practice rounds on the tough, 6,820-yard layout the anchors and hosts from ESPN (such as Chris Berman and Rich Eisen), WVIT-TV Channel 30 (Gerry Brooks and Joanne Nesti), WTNH-TV Channel 8 (Noah Finz), WTXX-TV Channel 61 (Justin Kiefer), and WFSB-TV Channel 3 (Joe Tessitore) were gathering with assorted others (like Tim Meadows, comedian and writer for Saturday Night Live) to see who could whack a ball the farthest.

There was also a Powerade Youth Golf Clinic, hosted by past GHO champions Peter Jacobsen and DA Weibring, and a Canon Shootout with four, two-person teams – including Jacobsen and Weibring, Fuzzy Zoeller and John Daly, and Jean Van der Velde and Billy Andrade.

There was even more fun on Wednesday as Jim Calhoun of the University of Connecticut, Kerry Collins of the New York Giants, Stone Phillips of NBC’s Dateline NBC, former NFL quarterback Boomer Esiason, Governor John Rowland, Ray Allen of the Milwaukee Bucks, and country singer Mark Wills started swinging clubs at the Celebrity Pro-Am.

While Berman joked with the crowd and Governor Rowland accepted a good-natured barb after he hooked his second shot on No. 1 into the trap (“Lower our taxes and you’ll get a free drop!”), the fans got a close up look at these celebrities and some of the pros that went along for the ride – like Mark Calcavecchia, John Daly, Paul Azinger, Davis Love III, and David Duval.

And then there were the autographs.

Things got considerably more serious on Thursday, though, when the first groups teed off (at the first and 10th tees) for real. There was plenty of anticipation too as, for instance, Charles Howell III teed off No. 1 at around 1:30 pm on Thursday and showed why he was the top golfer in the NCAA a year ago. At around 2 pm, Fran Marello of Plymouth – a little bit of a local hero, who got a nice, rousing round of applause – teed off at No. 10 and whacked a nice, long drive left that faded nicely into the fairway.

Marrello didn’t make the cut, but lots of others did and it was a pretty tight fight to the finish as Phil Mickelson survived a shot into the water on No. 15 to win the tournament by one stroke over Billy Andrade and two strokes over Dudley Hart, David Berganio and Chris DeMarco.

And if you went up, then you had an uncommon opportunity to see the River Highlands course record of 61 (set by Kirk Triplett last year) get tied twice this year – by Mickelson on Saturday and Scott Verplank on Sunday.

Oh yeah, if the sunstroke didn’t get you, then you must have had a pretty good time.