TWO HOLES IN ONE AS COLLEGE WINS ITS HOME TOURNAMENT

SCOT SHARKEY IS REMEMBERED BY HIS 

GEORGIA SOUTHERN UNI TEAM-MATES


FROM THE GOLF DIGEST WEBSITE
By LUKE KERR-DINEEL
with additional words by Colin Farquharson 
Two years after the tragic death in a house fire of their Scottish team-mate, Thomas Sharkey, pictured below, two United States college golfers have made aces in the same round en route to historic victory

On Sunday Georgia Southern won its first men's tournament in more than a year. But it wasn't the fact that the Eagles won so much as how they won that makes for one of the most inspirational golf stories of the year so far.

Playing at the Schenkel Invitational at Forest Heights Country Club in Statesboro, Georgia, two Georgia Southern senior-year students, Hayden Anderson and Will Evans, who finished joint fourth and joint 22nd in the tournament, respectively, each recorded holes-in-one during the second round. 
Those aces helped the team shoot a combined 12-under 276 on the day, vaulting them into a lead it would not relinquish Sunday when the Eagles beat runners-up Alabama-Birmingham by 12 strokes.
It was the first time in the tournament's 35-year history that Georgia Southern had won its home event.

Anderson and Evans are room-mates and two of four seniors on a team that should have included a fifth -- Thomas Sharkey, 21, an up and coming Scottish golfer who died tragically in a house fire at Helensburgh alongside his 55-year-old father of the same name and his eight-year-old sister Bridget in 2011.
Two men were convicted last year of murdering the family by setting the house on fire during the night.
Mrs Angela Sharkey was the only survivor.
Before the tournament, members of the team decided that if they won, they would take the trophy and deliver it to Thomas's mother in her native Scotland. "It definitely felt like destiny, but you never want to think that because the game of golf will come up and bite you real quick," Scott Wolfes, the team's low man and individual medalist with scores of 71, 70 and 68 for seve-under total of 209 over a par-72 course of 6,947yd.

"I just tried to play the best I could and not to think about anything and not to look at the scoreboard," Wolfes added. "There are so many things bigger than golf, and I'm thankful for every day I get to play."

That thought was echoed by the team's coach, Larry Mays.

"It was an emotional day with the two hole-in-ones, and we just wanted to come out today and finish it off. ... Thomas Sharkey was there - in spirit - the whole time, and we had the perfect Scottish [weather] for the last nine holes." Irishman Paul Dunne (Alabama-Birmingham) from Greystones finished T22 in a field of 90 players. He scored 70, 73 and 75 for two-over 218.