Randy King

Randy King covers Virginia Tech football and golf for The Roanoke Times.

Golf stories

• Giles wins golf title
• Bruins finish 3 shots short
• Bruins 2 back in quest for title
• Hanging Rock turns to Sullivan

Since moving from his native Massachusetts to Craig County in the mid-1990s, Gary Leroux has always been a different kind of golfer on the area scene.

For openers, Leroux can actually play. His 1998 triumph in the Roanoke Valley Match Play Championship and a slew of top-five finishes in other events has long since validated his course credentials.

Then there's the strong New England accent that always has made him an easy find among the crowd he's teed it up with since migrating south. And, lo and behold, find another scratch player in these parts who has enough blue-collar skills to lay the stone on their own farmland cabin.

"That stone work is going to kill me, I think. I never stop," cracked Leroux, after tying for third five weeks ago in the Roanoke Valley Golf Hall of Fame championship.

Talk about a guy who dares to be different. Five days after the HOF, the 50-year-old Leroux hopped in his car and drove to Haverhill, Mass., in a long-shot attempt at qualifying for the field for the June 20-22 Bank of America Classic event in nearby Concord.

He won the fifth and final berth among 17 players in the June 13 pre-qualifier. Four days later, he shot even par, but fell two shots of earning one of the final 11 spots in the Champions Tour event.

OK, he didn't win a dime. Leroux did earn a load of status, though. Just call the guy "pro" now.

"I sort of knew I would no longer be an amateur when I sent in my application to qualify," Leroux said.

"An official there told me, 'If you come here Tuesday, peg the tee in the ground and hit the ball, you're a pro.'

"When I got back here, I had some guys around here like Miller Baber and Jack Allara tell me that was crazy, like you've got to win money before the USGA deems you a pro. Finally, I couldn't take it any longer. So I called the USGA and the lady in charge said yes. She told me it would take from one to three years to get my [amateur] status back. So here I am."

Some guys would be crying about the situation. Not the easy-going Leroux.

"It didn't scare me to turn pro," Leroux said.

"Shoot, I've played amateur golf my whole life. So I'm going to take a shot at qualifying for the two Champions Tour events in North Carolina in September.

"Hey, it takes the same $125 to enter a Champions Tour event as it does the Hall of Fame. I got $83 at the Hall of Fame, and they're playing for $1.7 million out there. That's not my driving force, but you never know. If I'm going to shoot a good score, maybe I'll get in one of these things."

Since he wasn't eligible for this weekend's Roanoke Valley Match Play event, Leroux is competing in the club championship at Blacksburg Country Club.

"I guess if you're a club member, you can play, no matter what," Leroux said with a laugh. "It's funny, all these guys all licking their chops to beat me there. One of my good buddies, Mike Fields, called and told me, 'I want to whip a pro's butt!' I called him back and told him that I won't play with amateurs."

Mondy on a roll

Jake Mondy, a 15-year-old sophomore at Blacksburg High, has made some serious waves on the national scene the past few weeks. He has posted three straight top-seven finishes in AJGA events, including a tie for third at the Junior All-Star event in Farmington, Pa., on July 2-4. The finish earned him a berth in the prestigious Junior All-Star Classic later this year.

Quote-meister

Roanoke's Jack Wilkes turned heads on and off the course in his debut in last week's VSGA Junior Match Play Championship in Charlottesville. In addition to his strong runner-up finish to two-time champion Michael Moyers, the Cave Spring High junior provided the event's most notable quotes. After surviving his first two matches, a winded Wilkes laughed and said: "I'm going to fall asleep in the car. I'm probably going to get a couple of cheeseburgers ... maybe four or five."