Mark White

In 1996, Greg Norman entered the final round of the Masters Golf tournament with six-shot lead over his closest competitor, Nick Faldo. When the day started, nearly everyone expected Norman to pull out the win and probably in big fashion. This wasn’t meant to be. Norman struggled and ended with a final round 78. Faldo shot a final round 67 and got the five-shot win. It was painful to watch. You really had to feel sorry for Norman. Going into the final round of this year’s U.S. Open at Shinnecock Hills in New York, Wyndham Clark began the day with a six-stroke lead. By the time my dad and I tuned into the final round...

May was a terrible, lousy month on many fronts for me personally with one vehicle death and two pet deaths just for starters. Our Mazda, for all intents and purposes, died. I can’t justify a $10,000 repair bill on a SUV with nearly 94,000 miles, but that is another column for another day. Some of you may remember how a few weeks ago, I wrote about the death of one of our cats, Gizmo. Approximately three weeks later, Gizmo’s sister, Gadget, started acting sick so we took her to the veterinary hospital in Richmond. She did not seem real bad. The vet’s office told us she was in her end stage. She was...

While the old nine-hole Pineville golf course was the first one I ever played as a high schooler in the 1980s, the first 18-hole course I ever played was General Burnside Island Golf Course in General Burnside State Park. Burnside was the third golf course I ever played behind the old Pineville golf course and Indian Springs Country Club in Knox County, which is a nine-hole course still in use today. Compared to Pineville or Indian Springs, I remember Burnside seemed huge when I first played it. The then 14-year-old or so me found having 18 different holes on a course cool to play. This was the first course I had ever...

I can still remember the first golf course I ever played. I was either in eighth grade or a freshman in high school when I first took up playing golf. My dad started playing golf about one year prior to this. I would see him out in the yard practicing and then I started practicing myself. The first course I ever played was this little public course in Pineville. I don’t remember if it was part of the state park system at the time. It was this pretty short fun little course. Almost everyone walked this course because it was a short distance. I think the longest hole on the course was hole number...

My dad, Mike White, finally got one of his Christmas presents earlier this month. For Christmas, I had gotten us two tickets to see “Elvis! The Concert of Kings,” show at Renfro Valley. The show features three different Elvis impersonators representing his early days, the era of the famous 1968 Elvis comeback special, and the era of Elvis’ Las Vegas residency years. If you liked Elvis, or his music, then this was a pretty good concert to see. I only wish our cousin, Terry Profitt, was still with us. He died approximately five years ago. Terry was a huge Elvis fan. It did not matter if it was the music, Elvis’ movies or...

Only once in my more than three decades as a journalist have I been asked to demonstrate my knowledge about a subject before someone would let me interview them about it. It happened one day in late April 2017. I was sitting in my Williamsburg office after lunch when local horse enthusiast Phillip Perkins stopped by my office. Phillip told me he had a good story to tell me about the Kentucky Derby, but first I had to demonstrate to him I knew something about horse racing. Fortunately, I know a little something about the sport. I told Phillip I knew the first leg in the Triple Crown of horse racing was the...

When it comes to golf, I am what most people would call a hacker, or at least I used to be back when I played. There are a lot of us out there. For any non-golfers reading this column, a hacker is generally someone, who isn’t necessarily very good at golf most days but still enjoys getting out on the golf course to play. We enjoy spending time with friends or family while knocking the ball around the course on a pretty day. While we enjoy shooting the occasional good round and posting a lowish score – at least by our standards – we are not driven so much by our...

The political winds of change were blowing across the Tri-County area on Election Day as there were some big political shakeups in Laurel and Knox counties. In Laurel County, longtime Judge Executive David Westerfield lost a close primary election to Walter T. Hulett. Incumbent coroner Doug Bowling also lost his bid for re-election to challenger Mike Masters. In Knox County, incumbent Judge-Executive Mike Smith lost his bid for re-election to challenger Jeff Ketcham by a nearly two-to-one margin. By contrast, there wasn’t much political change in Whitley County on Election Day. Incumbent Whitley County Judge-Executive Pat White Jr. was not even challenged in his bid for re-election. Neither was Second-District Magistrate Mondo Cima. Third-District...

Recently, I had to say goodbye to a furry friend. I am not going to lie. I bawled my eyes out more than I have at the funeral of some human friends. It is amazing how close we can become with our pets. Gizmo lived a good life up until the very end. We got him and his sister, Gadget, approximately 18 years ago when they were kittens. They were so small back then they would have fun jumping through the holes in lattice under our back deck. During their early years they were inseparable and loved spending time outside. If we would have moved his food outside and gone out there to play...

Whitley County recently lost two pillars of the community with the recent death of former Williamsburg business owner Paul Steely and Corbin Dr. William Briscoe. Steely died at the age of 95 years old on April 28. He was well known in the Williamsburg community as one of the owners of Paul Steely Ford. He purchased the first Ford Explorer ever sold off the lot of Paul Steely Ford. He also purchased the last Ford Explorer ever sold off the lot on Sept. 11, 2009, right before it closed after more than 28 years in business. Steely, who was a lifelong Williamsburg resident, was much more than just a successful businessman. He...