For Bangor Municipal Golf Course pro Rob Jarvis and Kebo Valley Golf Club pro Peiter DeVos, this weekend is a special occasion.
The 10th annual Downeast Metro Golf Tournament will be held at their respective courses on Saturday and Sunday.
The A and B flight golfers will tee off at Bangor Muni on Saturday before concluding the 36-hole event on Sunday at Kebo and the C and D flight golfers will do the opposite.
“It’s very exciting,” said Jarvis. “When we started this, we had a pretty strong feeling we would get support from the players because they flat-out asked us to do it.
“Just to see it grow with people returning every year from all over the state is incredible,” said Jarvis. “It makes you feel good about running such an event.”
DeVos agreed.
“It’s a big milestone for Rob and me. It’s great to have it,” said DeVos. “The golfers definitely wanted it and it has shown in their response from year to year.”
Three former champions, including two-time winner John Hayes IV, are included in the 165-player field. That represents a full field.
There will be 99 golfers in the A-B flight and 66 in the lower C-D flight.
Cape Elizabeth native and South Portland resident Hayes won last year’s event on the first playoff hole against Newburgh’s Chris Kauppila.
Kauppila, who was a senior at Husson University in Bangor this year, is also in the field and both he and Hayes are coming into the tournament off impressive performances.
Hayes shot a five-under-par 137 to win the Maine Mid-Amateur championship by three strokes at the Webhannet Golf Club in Kennebunk last weekend. The tourney is for Maine residents 25 years of age or older.
Kauppila tied for 45th at the NCAA Division III golf championships at the Boulder Creek Golf Club in Boulder City, Nevada as he shot a four-over-par 292.
Hayes also won the 2017 Downeast Metro.
He will be in a threesome with 2020 winner Reese McFarlane, who is also from Cape Elizabeth, and Nate Roop. They will tee off at 7:40 a.m. on Saturday.
Bangor’s Tim Black, who won it in 2022, will tee off with Rick Hayward and Ed DePhilippo at 11:20 a.m.
Black was the only winner from the B flight as all the others came from the A flight.
Among other contenders will be Ricky Jones who plays out of the Samoset Resort in Rockport. Jones is an 11-time Maine Golfer of the Year and a three-time Maine Amateur tourney champ.
Jarvis and DeVos said their courses are in great shape and that one of the intriguing challenges for the golfers is the contrast between the two courses.
“They are very different golf courses,” said Jarvis. “On our course, you can take more risks and be more aggressive. You can pin-hunt a little more. There is less chance of being severely penalized for being on the wrong side of the hole on the greens. You play a little more defensively at Kebo.”
But he also noted that the Bangor Muni greens are much bigger than Kebo’s or virtually any other courses in the state so you could find yourself lining up a 60-foot putt which can lead to some three-putts.
“Our greens are massive and they’re difficult to read,” he said. “What they see isn’t necessarily what they get. The ball doesn’t break as much as people think.”
DeVos said the Kebo greens have a “little more slope to them.”
“The Bangor Muni lends itself to better scoring. Sometimes, we get a lot of wind at Kebo and the hole locations (are difficult) so you wind up playing more defensively,” said DeVos.
Showers are in the forecast so both pros are hoping the weather won’t be a factor.
DeVos said if they got a little rain, it could soften up the courses and lead to better scoring.
