Last chance to vote for Greatest holes

Last chance to vote for Greatest holes

Voting for the 2011 Greatest Golf Holes of the Valley series officially ends Wednesday.

We are four weeks in to the second year of the Tuesday holes feature in The Vindicator and on vindy.com. We kept open voting knowing that folks would have some interest in speaking up once they saw our first few holes.

The process has been pretty good.

Our first four weeks have showcased Stambaugh, Yankee Run, Lake Club and Deer Creek. And we visited four courses this past week.

It’s time to pick the final 10.

Greatest debate!

Ed Antonelli, above, is the 2010 SuperSenior champ for The Greatest. We connected with Antonelli last week on The Greatest’s tour of 2011 golf holes.

He’s proud to put on a 2011 title defense for sure this year. But he’s even prouder to defend some of the weekly Greatest holes.

He said the four holes selected so far for 2011 are all pretty good holes, but some of his buddies were critical of the No. 1 Stambaugh hole, he said.

“How can a muni hole be a Greatest hole?” they asked.

His reply to them: “Have you played No. 1?”

It got a little quieter. He nodded in admiration: “It’s a good hole.”

The choice of Deer Creek this week probably yields similar cries of “Oh, come on ....”

It’s a simple course, but don’t deny its challenge — especially on No. 12 which we featured this week.

The Greatest liked its well-defined left-side challenge for sure — steep incline, long bunker, etc. But the sneaky and understated table-top crown on the green’s right side was the capper.

Darn good hole design.

Tuesday’s hole: Life’s a beach!

Week Number five of the Greatest Golf Holes is unveiled Tuesday, and it’s a fitting hole coming out of the Memorial Day weekend.

If you’re longing for the beach after the holiday, tune in Tuesday for all the beach-like amenities our next hole displays.

It has one of the biggest in-course lakes we’ll visit (not counting lakes like Milton and Evans as “in-course”), and 15 bunkers.

Going, going ...

Bryn Kosco of Poland made himself a pretty good professional baseball career in the 1990s. It’s given him a pretty darned good golf swing, too.

In our tour of Greatest holes last week, Kosco met The Greatest at a thundering par 4 — and did some thundering of his own.

Kosco launched a drive just left of center, and followed it up with a booming iron from about 160ish yards — leading his three-some to the green.

Did he birdie?

Everyone birdies when filming The Greatest.