The only list that matters
Coty Cantrell of Garrard County didn’t make the Advocate’s preseason list of the area’s top boys golfers, a list that was compiled by yours truly. And he made it clear early in the season that he was a little bit miffed and quite a bit motivated by that omission.
Now he is alone on the list of local players who qualified for the boys state tournament, and I’m eating my words for the second time in less that a week. That’s OK, though. Cantrell is a talented golfer who worked hard to put himself in this position and will continue to work hard to achieve even more, and obviously I shouldn’t have overlooked him this summer.
He took today off to exhale after his success at the 4th Region Tournament, where he shot 75 to tie for fourth place and earn one of the three available individual qualifying berths, but tomorrow it’ll be back to work to prepare for next week’s state tournament in Bowling Green.
Cantrell is a soft-spoken player, but as I learned when we talked for a feature story I wrote just a few days after he was left off my list, he isn’t afraid to say what he thinks. And he had a couple of good lines when we talked at the regional on Tuesday.
The best of them came when he was asked about how difficult the Dix River Country Club course played during the tournament. The rough was crispy, the greens were fast and a number of players and coaches commented on the challenging pin placements, though none said it as well as Cantrell: “They had the pins stout. They weren’t playing around this morning. Somebody must’ve got into it with their wife or something.”
