Rain shortens Crown Point Invite

Updated: May 14, 2011 10:31PM

CROWN POINT — They tried to get 18 holes in at the Crown Point Invitational Saturday, playing through sheets of rain for the last hour, which caused the greens to puddle up and made putting an adventure.

Again, like it has with amazing consistency lately, the weather won — sort of.

After a spirited discussion among the coaches, a consensus was reached around 4:20 p.m.. Count this one as a nine-hole tournament and get ready for next week.

Both Crown Point varsity teams ended up in first — the Crown Point Red team, led by Nick Grubnich, shot a 162 at Youche Country Club. CP’s second team was 10 strokes behind the first team. Andrean finished third with a score of 179.

It was a frustrating day for Crown Point coach Del Kutemeier, who was fighting both the prom and the sporadic buckets of rain that came down throughout the day. The event originally was scheduled for April 19, which turned out to be a decent, but cool day. Problem was, the region was hit with a monsoon the day before and the course was shut down.

Kutemeier let his team tee off first because Crown Point had its prom, which meant the Bulldogs finished 18 holes. Grubnich finished with a 75, but it officially goes in the book as a 36.

Add on the fact that the Uebele Invitational, the oldest regular-season tournament in the state, was washed out on Friday and it’s been that kind of year for region golfers.

“I apologize for the rain,” Kutemeier said. “There is nothing we can do about it. It’s a shame we couldn’t finish the whole thing. I would’ve loved to see the kids get their 18 holes in. Welcome to spring.”

Both Grubnich and Garrett Bianchi of Hobart earned medalist honors.

Bianchi had an interesting round. He started off with bogey, par and bogey before getting it to 1-under with birdies on Nos. 4, 5 and 7. A bogey at eight brought him back to even. On the back nine, Bianchi made four straight pars before the coaches decided to bring the kids in.

There was a brief discussion about heading back out after the rain let up around 4 p.m., but there just wasn’t much interest. For Hobart, it means the Brickies still haven’t played an 18-hole tournament this year.

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