Friends of Animals Golf Tournament at Red Ledges

What a great event! This was the first year the Friends of Animals did a golf tournament as a fund raiser and it was awesome. It was held at Red Ledges, over in Heber City. This golf course was picked as the best new golf course in the country in 2009. Not bad.

After a few days of high winds and thunderstorms, the day of the tournament was nearly perfect. A bit of a morning chill and highs in the 70's. The event was sold out with 120 golfers. Check out Mount Timpanogos in the background.



It's always nice to see friends show up to support the dogs and cats. The couple in the red hats are Derrick and Lydia. Derrick is a mountain host with me over at PCMR and they come out to support almost every FOA event. Lydia is an awesome golfer.



Jim McLean is one of the biggest golf instructors in the U.S.. He runs multiple schools, has lots of books, and shows up on TV all the time. He is opening a school at Red Ledges and was at the tournament meeting people and giving pointers. This is a picture of the local school's head instructor, Jim, and the rest of my foursome.



The views at Red Ledges are pretty spectacular. We are about to hit from on high, down to the fairway you see. This is where the golf teachers were, so I was a bit nervous. Fortunately I found a nice swing and put by drive between where you see the golf cart and the green. Nothing like a huge downhill, a wind at your back, and a beer to help with a long drive.



Like I said, great views, even the close ones. The red rock in cliffs and hills in the area look almost like the St George area.



There were lots of contest along the course including a hole-in-one for $50,000, a hole-in-one for a new Subaru, longest drive, straightest drive and closest to the hole. One of my foursome, another Steve, won closest to the hole. You don't get much closer than this without it going in. No one claimed either of the hole-in-one prizes.



After the golf finished, we had a great lunch from Snake Creek Grill, gave out the prizes, and then did a brief auction. Part of the auction was drawings for large gift baskets, which had things like bottles of wine, gift certificates, ski passes,... each basket worth between $500 and $1000.

It began to look suspicious though when some drew Annica's ticket for a basket. Annica (left) was the FOAU board member who created and ran the entire tournament. Celebrating with her is Cathy King, FOAU's executive director.



But here's what it was all really about. The event raised $30,000 for Friends of Animals. What a tremendous success.

All the folks in light blue are the volunteers. The guy in the gray vest is the head of Red Ledges, Mitch Burns. In the dark blue shirt in the back is Jim Kelly. He was our MC, but is better known for his 35+ years of sports broadcasting on ESPN. It's great to have people like Jim living in Park City, willing to help out.