Roving on the range

Bryce Alderton

Bill Welch has never minded pounding ball after countless ball on the

driving range.

In fact, he actually enjoys it.

Maybe it comes from his childhood, when his parents would drop he

and older brother Tom off in the mornings at Kalamazoo Country Club

in Kalamazoo, Mich. They would return at 5 or 6 in the evenings to

pick up the two young golfers after a day on the course and

refreshing dip in the pool.

Bill Welch entered his first tournament when he was 9 years old

and has played countless events since for high school and college

teams. Then, in June, Welch, 52, added his name to a storied list of

names after claiming his first Santa Ana Country Club men’s club

championship when he defeated Dave Bock, 6 and 5, in the 36-hole

match-play final.

The win automatically qualified Welch to play in the Jones Cup,

scheduled for 1 p.m. Aug. 18 at Newport Beach Country Club.

Welch joins Santa Ana Country Club teammates Marianne Towersey

(women’s champion), Boyd Martin (senior champion) and Geoff Cochrane

(head professional) in the foursome that will compete against groups

from the three other private clubs in Newport-Mesa in the 18-hole

community golf extravaganza.

Welch, who lives in Newport Beach with wife Barbara and twin sons

Tom and Kevin Welch, both standouts in football and volleyball at

Corona del Mar High, will play in the Jones Cup for the first time.

Welch finished second to Martin for the men’s club crown in 2003.

In this year’s championship, Welch and Bock were tied after the

first 18 holes before Welch caught fire to distanced himself.

But he admitted it wasn’t anything spectacular.

“I had a game plan going in that it would be like a long marathon,

not a sprint,” Welch said of the 36-hole final. “You don’t have to

necessarily do something spectacular unless you’re presented with a

certain situation. I just kept going.”

Welch said the strategy changes in match play as opposed to stroke

play.

“You’re playing against your opponent as opposed to playing

against par on the golf course,” Welch said of match play. “If you

know that, you don’t worry about knocking it stiff to make birdie.

Sometimes you make a bogey and that is good enough.”

Welch, who is in the real estate brokerage business, said he plays

once or twice a week and carries a zero handicap.

But the range is not a foreign place to the Michigan native.

“I don’t mind beating balls. It is fun,” he said.

Welch grew up in Kalamazoo, Mich., and attended Adrian College, a

Division III school in a town of roughly 20,000 residents 30 miles

south of Ann Arbor.

He played on Adrian’s golf team for three years, earning team Most

Valuable Player honors all three years while leading the team to a

tie for the Michigan Interscholastic Athletic Association

championship one season.

He graduated from Adrian with degrees in finance and English and

moved to Newport Beach in 1981.

This year’s Jones Cup features foursomes counting two best balls

per hole.

Welch prefers to maintain simplicity heading into the

championship.

“Regardless of what the format is, you still have to get the ball

in the hole,” Welch said. “There is not a lot of science to it.”