June 22, 2000
Ben Turnbull, the East Hampton High School senior who for the past several weeks has been closing out his high school career on a high note, set a third school record at North Carolina State University last weekend as he finished ninth in the national 2,000-meter steeplechase.
It was only the second time Turnbull had done the shorter version of the 3,000-meter event, and only the fourth time he had competed in a steeplechase, which is notable for its three-foot-high barriers and eight-foot-long water jumps.
“He ran fabulously,” said Turnbull’s coach, Bill Herzog. “Five seconds faster and he would have been an all-American. . . . If it had been a 3,000, he probably could have beaten some kids who finished ahead of him. . . .”
June 29, 2000
The new back nine holes of the South Fork Country Club in Amagansett will be opened for play following a ribbon-cutting ceremony Saturday morning, the culmination of a project that the club’s president, Lee Dion, began to promote, with mixed reaction from the membership at first, seven years ago.
“It’s wonderful, it looks wonderful,” Dion said of the links-style addition designed by Gil Hanse of Malvern, Pa. “When the wind blows, the tall fescue looks like the amber waves of grain.”
. . . The back nine has figured more or less in the club’s plans since it was founded in 1961. The club was a reincarnation of the Amagansett Golf Club, which dated to 1924, but died because of the Depression.
Bruno (Whitey) Tiska of Bridgehampton farmed the land thereafter, said Dion, and sold it in the 1950s to a group of local businessmen, who fashioned a nine-hole course “oriented more north-south than east-west, the way it is now. Harry Katz’s house on the hill, with the horses, used to be the old clubhouse.”
. . . The club’s membership has almost doubled, to “an absolute maximum of 400,” said Dion, in order to finance the new nine. He hopes that attrition over the years will reduce the membership to 365. The initiation fee has tripled from the original estimate four years ago to $45,000, of which, he said, $15,000 would be “a bond that they’ll get back when they leave.”
—
Joe Sullivan has what he thinks is a revolutionary idea in the form of a 5K race based on a best-ever time scale spanning 44 age groups that he will hold at Riverhead’s County Center on July 22.
. . . More than likely, his Panathon, whose competitors will start in multiple waves with the slowest going first and the fastest last, will end with a photo finish. “You might have a 13-year-old boy, a 30-year-old woman, a 55-year-old man, and a 20-year-old girl racing for the tape,” he said. “In theory, as long as their performances are close to the best-ever performances in their age groups, a male or female aged 11 to 90 could win — it’s everybody’s race.”
. . . Sullivan added that the Panathon “may be a flop or a tremendous success. Everyone’s said it’s a great concept.”
—
With a stiff wind gusting to 30-plus miles per hour at Lazy Point Sunday, Luke Svanberg, whose older brother, Lars, owns the Main Beach Surf and Sport shop in Wainscott, was not too hopeful for a smooth kite-surfing ride.
. . . “Anyone who’s athletic can do it — man or woman,” said Svanberg, who was there to demonstrate the newest of the boarding sports. “It usually takes three hourlong lessons to get someone to stand up. They can do it well in four or five.”
. . . Asked if the kite surfer were pulled by the kite, which extends 30 meters out from a hand-held bar with steering and braking controls, Svanberg said, with a smile, “Oh, you’re pulled all right! It’s like being towed by a 747.”
