The St. Augustine Amateur again was a good one with a good field, and it was heartening that the tournament guru, Jay Jennison, is doing OK in the early stages of his fight with cancer. The players wore ribbons in his honor.

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The St. Augustine winner, Blayne Barber of Lake City, has the potential to be the best ever from this area, and that’s saying a whole lot. He’s a dominant player, as everyone found in junior golf and now in big state events.

It’s not that he wins, he beats everyone into the ground.

Guess it’s that home schooling, just like Tim Tebow had.

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If you haven’t been to Magnolia Point lately, make the trip. Great shape. Good facilities all the way around. Good food, too.

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Great to see the Nationwide Tour coming back to this area and let’s hope the folks at Ponte Vedra don’t have high hopes of a lot of fans. Sadly, we’re a one-trick pony. We support The Players and that seems to be it.

If you disagree, let’s talk about the senior tour events at the Golf Club of Amelia, the King & Bear and the old Senior Players Championship at the Valley.

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The Bill Black memorial tournament at Ponte Vedra raised $1,200 for the Jacksonville Area GA scholarship fund and you can credit Lee Crowe for making this a labor of love.

He takes the occasion for his annual honors and this year’s recipients included JAGA officers Jerry Kay and Bob Streightiff, tournament go-fer Russ Hamilton, volunteers Ed Tormollen and George Halvorsen, and pros Jim Lear and Jim Howard. Crowe’s “Man of the Year”: scorer Al Levene.

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Couple more JAGA items: The once-postponed Amelia National Two-Man next Tuesday (Oct. 28) almost has a full field and the 2010 Junior moves to Eagle Landing.

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Golf course construction in the U.S. is almost nil, so where are the new frontiers? Oddly, one is Vietnam, which has a long and pretty coastline, and developers are putting in courses to lure the giant Chinese market.

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JAGA is considering an affiliation with the Blue Golf internet site to help with its tournaments and other paperwork areas. If you’ve had dealings with them, let your JAGA director know the pros and cons.