By TEDDY ALLEN/Designated Writers

As close as we can figure, this is the 15th annual playing of the Kent Lowe Invitational Tournament. We never really thought of keeping count. But suddenly one of us got to thinking — rare — and we realized this had been going on longer than we’d thought.

So while you might not care, I was voted unofficial Secretary of the Invitational — it was a battlefield promotion this weekend while on the golf course — so I have to write this for the Invitational archives.

Suspects come and go in the annual Invitational but here are the ones who played in this year’s opening round event:

From the left, taken on a weekend morning at the Royal and Ancient Querbes Golf Club, Sands and Dunes:

Patrick Netherton, whose Northwestern State hat you might can and might cannot see, is the tall NSU play-by-play human and host of cleverly named Patrick Netherton Show on 1130 AM The Tiger, the lede-in to the SportsTalk radio show on 1130 AM weekdays 5-6 and hosted by DW co-founder John James Marshall and his big brother Ben. Patrick hits it high and batted it around in 79 strokes, not bad for a dude who hasn’t played golf in a year. I know: I hate people like Patrick too;

Me/Teddy, in either long shorts or short longs;

Hero of the Hour Kent Lowe, the longest tenured and oldest living member of the LSU SID department, although he added up a scorecard total wrong post-round; I’ll never trust an LSU stat sheet again;

Timmy Brando, broadcaster and founder of the Invitational, and for that we thank him; and;

Roy Lang III, USA TODAY Network and Shreveport Times sports scribe, who once shot an 80 in the post-Monday Masters Media Round at Augusta National after driving all night — and having to buy long pants at the strip mall just outside the club gates. Four hours after this photo was taken, he’d carded five birdies and three bogeys and 10 pars. Yawn. I birdied five holes too — last month. Total. Give or take.

Kent was a huge help to Tim, stat-wise and otherwise, when Timmy B. first became a broadcaster. The Kent Lowe Invitational Tournament was born as a way to honor our friend Kent, who comes up to his Shreveport hometown each summer for a week or so; LSU ballgames and such makes that trip just about impossible at any other time of the year. So when he says he’s coming — as he did Thursday — we go to rounding up the Usual Suspects and try to get in two or three or four rounds.

I think Roy won Longest Drive (No. 14 to the collar) and I won Longest Pants.

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