Granada Hills Has Enough Left in Bag

Without its guardian Angel, many predicted Granada Hills High would fall from its place as a City Section golf power.

But the Highlanders showed three-time City champion Darren Angel didn’t leave the cupboard bare when he left for Arizona State. They claimed their fourth consecutive section team title, winning Tuesday at Rancho Park golf course.

“I knew we could do it,” said Brian Vranesh, the only Highlander to play for all four championship teams. “Nobody should have counted us out, even without Darren. I didn’t. I was never worried.”

Granada Hills had a commanding 406-423 lead over second-place Grant after Monday’s first round. The Highlanders slipped a bit on Tuesday, and Grant charged, but the Highlanders did not have a player shoot higher than 89 in two days and finished well ahead of Grant, 822 strokes to 831.

Ben Krug shot 73 on Monday and 74 Tuesday for the Highlanders. Rikard Samuelsson, a foreign exchange student from Sweden, shot 79-82 for 161, while Vranesh overcame an 11 on the fifth hole Tuesday to finish at 80-87.

With Angel gone, the individual tournament was up for grabs and San Pedro senior Kevin Bodlovich took advantage.

Bodlovich fired the tournament’s only sub-par round, a 69 on Monday, to take a four-stroke lead and followed with a 73 on Tuesday to win by five strokes over Krug.

Todd Golditch, 5-A league player of the year from Chatsworth, finished third at 149.

“It was edges, edges, edges,” said Krug, who had four birdie putts scoot to within an inch of the hole and had another stop on the lip of the cup. “I couldn’t get any birdies to catch [Bodlovich].”

Fourteen-year-old freshman Julie Park of Granada Hills won the first City Section girls’ title by shooting a two-round total of 171, but she wasn’t satisfied.

“That’s not a good score for a champion,” Park said. “I was missing all of my putts. I should have been 10 strokes better.”

Granada Hills and Grant, along with the top 10 individual finishers, advance to the Southern California Golf Assn. tournament June 6 at the SCGA Players’ Club in Temecula.