‘This is how things go’ at Family Golf Annual Event

Participants cite life memories as an enduring draw to compete in the Northern California Family Golf Tournament

Editor Emmett Berg paid a visit to the 72nd outing to learn more.

Earlier this year George Ambrosio, who organizes the Northern California Family Golf Tournament, received a call from Oregon. Matt Ochs was on the telephone with a special request. Matt’s father, Jim, was struggling with dementia and memory loss. 

Matt told George his father could still clearly remember scoring a hole-in-one in the 1989 final match of what was then called the Northern California Father-Son Tournament. It was an amazing match where both teams, playing alternate shot format, had recorded an ace during the final round. Matt had seen the ace himself. The problem was Matt could not locate Jim’s ace in George’s lists of winners and aces over seven decades. Could George correct the record?

“I told him we can do that,” Ambrosio said. “This is how things go. And he said it was important for him to come back and play the tournament. And we get that a lot.”

This year, Ochs was part of the 58 teams signed up for the flighted event at Golden Gate Park Golf Course. The 9-hole track, newly redesigned, has a special relationship with the tournament: the day the golf course opened in 1951 was also the first running of the Father-Son.

“This is probably my favorite event held here,” said the course’s general manager, Joe Koran. “Every year we see players so happy to be back, and new families joining in. There’s great stories all over the facility. It’s the best of golf.”

On course, the players admitted to feeling a bit of pressure in front of family members. “It’s the ultimate test of the family bond.” laughed John Donohue, 48. “When things are going great, you’re arm-in-arm down the fairway. When things fall apart, well…”

On the fifth green, John almost missed an eight-inch putt. Dad Kevin, 81, “would have flipped out if I had missed,” John whispered.

Four-time winners of the tournament, the Donohue boys this year marked 40 years of participation. “Ever since we were in the diaper flight,” Kevin called out.

Every year the date of the tournament makes the cut as a high holiday. With the highs come lows. Kevin confessed that one year, he was bested by a child who Kevin’s friend guessed “was so young he was still eating mush.” This year, slowed by COPD, Kevin only has breath enough for quick stories, but still carried his own bag of clubs.

Ed Markey was out there as well, a veteran competitor who first played the tournament in 1977. Ed and his grandson Jack were paired with Anthony Renteria and his son Nico, who was “as beginner as beginner gets.” A feature of the NorCal Family are the many flights to encompass different skill levels. “This tournament is for everybody,” Renteria said. 

Only a few years since 1951 has the tournament not been held. Some 72 tournaments have been held so far, now supported by Ambrosio and Tom Culligan. 

And the fever has reached into the next generations. Theo Heffron, 15, was in his third year of playing the tournament with his dad Tim. “We always have a good time and you learn a lot from playing with the other families,” Theo said. Tim called it his “favorite part of the year.”

Lia Chow, 8, ran and turned a cartwheel on #1 fairway after a strong driver swing off the tee. She and Ricky Ralphson, 7, could barely contain their excitement. “These kids met here,” said her father Jeffrey Chow, who was paired with Ricky’s dad Rick. “Before we knew it they were rolling down the hills together.”