Ouellette tops golf hall inductions

During a 14-year stretch of tournament play, Mary Ouellette of Millinocket made a mark for herself in women’s competitive golf.

Ouellette’s efforts will be permanently recorded when she is enshrined Friday night with eight other members of the golf fraternity in the Maine Golf Hall of Fame at Sable Oaks Golf Club in South Portland.

The other inductees are Ron LeClair, an Orono native now living in Fern Park, Fla.; recent WMSGA Championship victor Pennie Cummings of Lewiston; Royce Abbott of Auburn and now Scottsdale, Ariz.; Al Biondi of Augusta; Isaac Merrill of Camden; John Levinson of Kennebunk Beach; Blaine Davis of Cape Elizabeth; and Pete Ruby Jr. of Falmouth.

Merrill, Ruby, Levinson, and Davis will be inducted posthumously.

The festivities open with a golf tournament, naturally, at 10:30 a.m. followed by a reception and banquet beginning at 6 p.m.

Ouellette’s accomplishments began with a Maine schoolgirl championship in 1976 and continued through to her runner-up finish in the 1989 New England Women’s Golf Association Championship after a sudden-death playoff for the title.

From 1980 to 1989, she collected seven Women’s Maine State Golf Association titles and was runner-up the other three years.

In addition, she added a second schoolgirl crown in 1977 and was state junior champion in ’77 and ’78. Her golf prowess earned her a four-year scholarship to Lamar University in Texas.

Her accomplishments include setting women’s course records of 68 at Bangor Municipal Golf Course, 69 at Hermon Meadow Golf Course, 71 at Penobscot Valley Country Club in Orono, and 76 at Sugarloaf Golf Club in Carrabassett Valley.

Ouellette also coached four sports, including golf, at Stearns High School in Millinocket.

LeClair, who now owns his own business in Florida, turned pro in 1959, a year after graduating from the University of Maine. While playing with the Black Bears, he was Maine Intercollegiate champion and a semifinalist in the New England Intercollegiate Championship his senior year.

As a pro, LeClair won the Maine Open in 1966. Over the years, he also won the Vermont Open, the Down East Open, the Maine Professional Championship six times, and the Maine Professional Golfers’ Organization tourney twice.

LeClair also won more than half a dozen Canadian tournaments before regaining his amateur status in 1974. He was the Florida State Match Play champion in ’93.

Cummings was nominated on the basis of her efforts in the women’s amateur championships. She was WMSGA champion four times before her nomination, and added a fifth this summer. Cummings was also runner-up four times.

Cummings, the sister of current Hall of Fame member Martha White of Hampden, also rolled up an impressive victory in the Bangor Daily News Amateur women’s division this year.

Merrill, a Camden summer resident, won four Maine Amateur titles and two Maine Open Amateur crowns between 1927, at age 16, and 1941. He was the only man to win both amateur titles in the same year, turning that trick in 1931.

Abbott held the Maine Junior title from 1936 through ’39 and added the Interscholastic crown in ’38. He also won a pair of amateur titles.

Davis spent 40 years as a sports writer and editor for the Guy Gannett papers in Portland and was the handicapper and tournament director for the Maine State Golf Association for 35 years.

Biondi, the longtime pro at Augusta Country Club in Manchester, won the New England Senior pro championship 15 times, was top man among Maine Seniors, and was the designer and builder of Springbrook Golf Club in Leeds.

Levinson, who called Kennebunk Beach home during the summer, became the first man to win three New England Amateur championships, in 1936, ’37, and ’47. He also competed in 15 U.S. Amateurs, five U.S. Opens, a British Open, and a British Amateur among his tournament travels.