Ex-champion dealing with some changes Three-round state tourney begins Monday in Rockland

Watch for Mrs. Josh Kershner to tee off in the 75th Women’s Maine State Golf Association championship Monday at Rockland Golf Club.

Mrs. Kershner – otherwise known as seven-time WMSGA champion and Waterville native Abby Spector – is making her return to the tournament with a 9:20 a.m. tee time.

The name change isn’t the only difference for Spector, who has decided to hang on to her maiden name for a while, at least in the milieu of Maine golf.

Spector acknowledges she isn’t as strong as she was when she won six straight WMSGA titles and four straight schoolgirl championships before a fine career at the University of North Carolina. That was before she had to undergo emergency open-heart surgery in October 2003.

The ordeal left her with some short-term memory loss, blurred vision and coordination problems.

Then again, Spector won’t be as weak as she was last summer when she used a cart to tally a three-day total of 267 – 42 strokes behind winner Lori Frost of Brewer – including a disappointing 98 on the final day of the tournament.

This summer, Spector’s goal is to finish the tournament walking all the way.

“That would be really big for me,” she said from Wolfeboro, N.H., where she now lives with her husband. “I would be so happy if I could do that.”

Spector will likely leave the top spots next week to defending champion Frost of Brewer, five-time winner Pennie Cummings of Wayne, and Cummings’ sister Martha White of Hermon, who has won the WMSGA title 13 times herself.

Cummings, who was the runner-up last year, tees off with Frost and White at 8 a.m. Monday. The second group, made up of Megan Angis (Biddeford-Saco Country Club), Kristin Kannegieser (Martindale) and Amber Quinn (North Haven) starts at 8:10.

Other contenders include Bucksport High School student Whitney Hand, who nearly qualified for the Greater Bangor Open in last week’s Junior GBO and finished second in the schoolgirl championship last fall.

Spector barely made the requirements to play in this year’s WMSGA. Players must participate in at least two weekly tournaments over the course of the summer, but Spector only got in one tourney – the June 21st Metropolitan at Boothbay – because the other was rained out. The cancellation didn’t affect her eligibility, however.

Spector last played Rockland in 2004 and won the 1998 WMSGA title – her third in a row at that point – at the 5,457-yard, par-73 course.

The Kershners are living in Wolfeboro, N.H., and working together at the Lake Winnipesaukee Golf Club in New Durham, N.H. Spector is working in the pro shop, which doesn’t leave her a lot of time to play – nine holes two or three times a week, she estimated, which is way down from her pre-surgery routine of daily practice.

“I’m not as strong as I was, I know that, but that’s something I can physically improve,” she said. “With golf it’s just so hard to tell. It’s hard to tell if it’s the lack of practice or it’s the actual swing.”

Spector and Kershner got married this April in a small ceremony in Waterville, about four months after she graduated from North Carolina. They were engaged before last summer’s WMSGA.

Although she’s legally changed her last name to Kershner, Spector concedes most people in her home state wouldn’t recognize her new name.

“I’m sort of known in Maine as Abby Spector,” she said. “I don’t want to disappear. At least, not yet.”