For Lee High School’s golf team to travel by car to Tuesday’s VHSL Class 2 state tournament in Tappahannock, it would take a drive that might be too much for Tiger Woods or John Daly.
A vehicle would begin in Ben Hur, then head through the Lee County towns of Pennington Gap, Woodway and Stickleyville.
Hang a right at Hardee’s in Duffield, and then motor past Clinchport, Gate City, Weber City, what a pity.
You’re just getting to the Tennessee state line.
It’s another 30 minutes through Kingsport to Interstate 81 outside Bristol.
Cross the state line back into Virginia, head up I-81 North and the counties crawl across the odometer: Washington, Smyth, Wythe, Pulaski, Montgomery, Roanoke, Botetourt, Rockbridge and Augusta.
Exit just below Staunton for I-64 East. Up and down Afton Mountain into Albemarle County; then more counties: Fluvanna, Louisa, Goochland, Henrico and Hanover.
Time to get off the interstate for U.S. 360 where the names are downright Colonial: Manquin and Central Garage in King William County; St. Stephen’s Church and Millers Tavern in King & Queen County.
Finally, cross into Essex County, where just east of Tappahannock lies Hobbs Hole Golf Course, the site of the VHSL championship.
Google Maps estimates the total driving distance between Ben Hur and Tappahannock as 423 miles. The estimated time on the road is 6 hours, 43 minutes.
Ready to tee off?
Or you could make the trip a different way.
Prepare for takeoff.
The Lee High golf team will do just that. Four team members and head coach Barry Audia will board an 11-passenger King Air 350 aircraft on Saturday morning and fly across the commonwealth.
The trip should take slightly more than an hour.
Golf is serious business at Lee, where the Generals won the 2023 VHSL championship and placed third behind Floyd County in last year’s tournament.
However, Audia was halfway joking when he and longtime friend Greg Estes were discussing the upcoming road trip from a county where the westernmost point is beyond Detroit to a county that not far from the Chesapeake Bay.
“I was just kidding around. I said, ‘Man, it would be good if we could fly,'” Audia said. “Greg said, ‘Where’s the state [tournament]?’ I said, it’s not far from Maryland. It’s about 7 1/2 hours. It would be nice if we could get on that bird.’ He said, ‘Well, we can make it happen.’ “
Estes is the president of Estes Bros. Const. Inc., a Lee County-based company that according to the company website began in 1961 when Estes’ father, Robert Estes, and two other men purchased a new Ford backhoe and started digging.
The company has grown a bit in six decades.
It now operates two aircraft out of Lee County Airport near the Flatwoods section of the county, and Estes has managed to secure one of the prop jets to transport the teens to their tee time.
“I’ve always supported the golf team,” said Estes, a 1987 Jonesville High School graduate. “Anything that they’ve needed, I’ve always told Barry anything they need, let me know. We just try to take care of them.
“I’ve been thinking about it when I realized how far away the state tournament was going to be, what kind of drive that was going to be. As long as it doesn’t affect my crew flying back and forth to get to various jobs, then I’ll let the golf team use it.”
Estes’ company does much of its work building roads and bridges. Estes said his firm currently has three contracts in Mississippi.
“We work all over the Southeast. The only way I can get my [employees] back and forth, home on the weekends, is to fly them.”
Estes hopes to be able to attend the tournament on Tuesday, which begins with an 8 a.m. tee time.
Three of Lee’s seven players left earlier this week for Tappahannock. The party for the return trip on the plane might be larger.
“The boys on the team that drove up told me they want to ride back on an airplane,” Estes said. “If there’s a seat available, I may hop on there Tuesday morning and fly up and just watch the golf tournament and fly back with the boys.”
If it is surprising to learn there is an airport near Flatwoods, Virginia, well, perhaps it shouldn’t be.
“It’s a really nice facility,” Estes said. “We’ve got a corporate hangar down there. We have three airplanes in it, and we have room for a pickleball court. We’re flying in and out at least twice a week, every week. Sometimes it will be four or five flights a week.
“Various people come and go out of there. It’s got really cheap fuel, some of the best prices around. So the people instead of going to Morristown or Tri-Cities, they’ll stop in there and top off their tanks.”
Estes was en route in one of his planes Thursday from Las Vegas, where he playing in a pro-am golf tournament.
Audia knows a bit about competing in Sin City.
Upon graduation from Pennington High School in 1975, he embarked on a boxing career with more than 100 amateur fights including one against legendary Thomas “Hit Man” Hearns. As an 18-year-old in 1976, Audia reached the semifinals at the U.S. Olympic Trials in a 132-pound division that included two-time light welterweight world champion Aaron Pryor and eventual Olympic gold medalist Howard Davis.
He turned professional in 1980, winning his first 21 fights with his second pro bout at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas.
Audia reached his peak in 1984, ranked No. 5 in the world in the welterweight division behind a Who’s Who of boxing: Sugar Ray Leonard, Hearns, Roberto Duran and Wilfred Benitez.
Along the way he spent time training with former heavyweight champion John Tate when both fighters were managed by Knoxville, Tennessee’s Ace Miller.
Safe to say he learned the ropes.
And along with bruises, black eyes, bloody noses, Audia picked up national notoriety and a never-forgotten nickname:
The “Pennington Pounder.”
Audia said the name originated from when the ring announcer took some liberties before one of his bouts.
“The announcer kind of surprised me, ‘In this corner, the Pennington Pounder!'” he recalled. “I said, ‘Oh Lord, I hope that don’t stick. And it did. I mean, like glue.”
Audia left the boxing ring in 1987 for perhaps a more challenging task than dodging blows from the likes of Tommy Hearns. After graduating from East Tennessee State University in 1990, he spent 34 years as a middle-school math and science teacher, retiring in May.
Lee High School was formed in 1989 out of the consolidation of five high schools: Dryden, Flatwoods, Jonesville, Keokee and Pennington. Thomas Walker in the western tip of Lee County was not part of the merger.
Audia, who became an accomplished local amateur golfer, became Lee’s head coach in 2012. The 2023 championship was the program’s second VHSL title, with the first coming in 1990.
The Generals will try to reclaim the crown from Floyd County, which won in 2024 on its home turf at Great Oaks Country Club and has taken the title in three of the last four years.
This year’s Lee team, powered by its top three of Walker Baker, Brycen Coomer and Braylen Pendergraft, carded a four-man score of 4-under-par 284 to win the Region 2D championship on its home course, Cedar Hill Country Club in Jonesville.
Lee’s effort was bolstered by No. 6 man Konner Early, who suffered a broken collarbone in a football game in September but returned to shoot 1-under-par 71 in the region.
The Generals captured the season-opening Farmer’s & Miner’s Bank Invitational in August at Cedar Hill with a score of 280. Floyd County defeated Lee by one stroke in a midseason tournament in Marion.
Lee and Floyd County will be joined by Strasburg, Appomattox County, Graham, James River, Stonewall Jackson and Randolph-Henry in the Class 2 tournament. The Class 1 tourney is in Tappahannock on Monday.
Almost anything can happen in a one-day, 18-hole state tournament on an unfamiliar course.
“One day for all the marbles is not a true test of golf,” Audia said. “The year we won, we could have finished third as easily as we won. Things have just got to go your way that day.”
And that’s the plane truth.
