LOCAL GOLF: Little comes up big at Faulconer

PALMYRA — Coming into Sunday’s final round of the Faulconer golf tourna-ment at Lake Monticello, leader Nick Little had given himself some serious wiggle room.
Up four strokes on the competition, Little did better than play it safe, he padded his lead. Shooting two under par 70, the 22-year-old Crozet native ran away with title, winning by eight strokes.
“This was my first tour-nament of the summer,” Little said. “So it was good to get out there and play well. Hopefully by the end of this summer I can pick up a few more.”
Little had the best round of the tournament on Friday, finishing the day with a six-under par 66.
“Nothing I was doing was spectacular, or unbe-lievable, but everything was good,” Little said of his three-day performance.
Sunday’s round was the golf equivalent of a victory lap according to runner-up Jerry Burton.
“It was a great tourna-ment for second place,” Burton joked. “[Little] wasn’t going to let anyone back into it. We had a good time riding around and talking about it the whole time.”
For the third day in a row, Little took care of business on the front nine, shooting par or better on every hole, and picking up three birdies.
“Today, I went out trying to do nothing different,” Little said. “I just tried to go about as if it was the first day, the first tee shot. You can’t think ahead, and you can’t reflect what just happened.”
With almost a double-digit lead heading into the back nine, all bets were off on catching the leader.
Little, who golfed for both Western Albemarle and Radford, is mulling over the idea of going pro.
“It’s something I’ve been giving a lot of thought,” Little said. “But right now I’m going to finish up one more year at Radford.”
Burton was sound throughout the tourna-ment. The runner-up in last month’s Greene Hills Invi-tational, Burton was one of only a few players to con-sistently hover around par, shooting two under in the first two rounds, and just one over in the final round.
“It’s a pretty tight course, so I made up my mind to hit a three iron off the tee on every whole,” Burton said. “If you’re not hitting a driver perfect you’re going to get in so much trouble out here its ridiculous.”
Most of the Lake Monti-cello golf course is long and narrow, with a slew of water hazards packed tightly between plenty of vegetation. It makes pick-ing up penalty strokes all to easy.
“Thank God for the vol-unteers,” Burton said. “If they aren’t out there you’re not going find your ball. But that’s the challenge of the course.”
Thirteen-year-old Evan Childress played well be-yond his years. The Pea-body eighth-grader was the winner of the third flight, shooting an 83 on the day.
“I was a little nervous on the first tee, but it gets easier every time,” Chil-dress said of playing with adults in a competitive tournament. “But it gets easier every time. I felt like I got better each day I played.”
Childress will be a freshman at Monticello in the fall and plans to golf for the Mustangs.