Hole-in-one highlights golf tournament

Since the inception of the annual Wedell Williams Aviation & Cypress Sawmill Foundation Golf Tournament in 2006, there had never been a recorded “ACE” or hole-in-one at the event.
All of that changed during this year’s event on April 4 as Tanner Manuel’s tee shot on the 176-yard, par 3 seventh hole at The Atchafalaya at Idlewild found its way into the hole.
That shot helped Manuel’s team, Prevention PLUS, go on to win the Championship Flight with a score of 15 under par 67. The Prevention PLUS team of Peter Abel, Ashton Abel and Manuel played a solid front nine and closed out the tournament by shooting 9 under on the back nine. The 15-under-par equaled the tournament record set in 2011 by the Swiftships team.
Finishing second in the Championship Flight this year was the King Trucking No. 1 team with a score of 59 (13 under par), represented by Bryan Belle, Casey Crappell and Gerald Gatlin.
The third-place team overall was Williams Inc., which had team members Rudy Sparks, Ira Patureau and David Livingston posting a 12 under par 60.
In the First Flight, winners were: first-place, Settoon Construction (Cooney Comeaux, Paul Hebert and Chad Quick); second-place, Average Joes (Jake Angelle, Marcus Peterson and Jerry Hall); and third-place, Pennzoil 10 Min. Oil Change (Brandon Brown, Chad Ross and Guy Bonenfant). All three teams were tied at 65 and order of finish was determined by score card match.
The second flight winners were: first-place with score of 72, King Trucking No. 2 (Ricky Weber, Mike Taylor and Dwalyn Steele); second-place with a 73 was ARL No. 1 (Hugh Hidalgo, Jack Hidalgo and Chris Childers); and third-place carding a 73 was Pulmonary Home Care (Tilman Luke, Joseph Shelly and Junius Portier).
The Long Drive competition was won on hole No. 5 by Doug Lemoine, and the Closest-to-the-Hole prize was won by Manuel with his hole-in-one on No. 7.
Tournament chairman Bill Marin reported, “This year we had 29 teams competing, and we were fortunate to dodge the bad weather just long enough for us to get play started and finished Friday afternoon. Much thanks goes out to the three food and drink sponsors, Cameron Iron Works, Cannatas and Tanks-a-Lot.
“The Cypress Sawmill Golf Tournament is always set up in the same format ... no mulligans or paying to move up on par 5s, and the players really like the fact that this is an announced ‘play-by-the rules’ scramble golf tournament. Every year most teams let us know that they want the setup to remain in place, and we intend to do that since this is one of the most popular scramble tournaments held in our South Louisiana region,” Marin stated.
The Wedell Williams Aviation & Cypress Sawmill Foundation Golf Tournament is always the lead off Friday event to officially start the Patterson Cypress Sawmill Festival, held annually during the first weekend of April at Kemper Williams Park near Patterson.