The year was 1970. Richard Nixon was president, the Beatles had just broken up, and the cost for a gallon of gas was just 36 cents.

During that same time, golf course construction was booming across the country. Only a few years before, the Altoona area could boast of just a couple of nine-hole layouts, but by 1970 there were a total of five local, 18-hole golf courses.

The newest of these, Scotch Valley, had just opened the previous year as a sister course to Blairmont’s nine-hole layout in Hollidaysburg. By September of 1970, the new course was ready to conduct its inaugural club championship.

The winner that year was one of Blair County’s iconic sports figures, William “Skip” Hughes. At 58 years old, the local dentist faced off against pharmacist Tom Treese in Scotch Valley’s championship match.

All even after 18 holes, Hughes clinched his eventual victory on the first hole of a sudden-death playoff.

Hughes, a 1931 graduate of Hollidaysburg High School, played college basketball for the University of Pittsburgh. He was most well-known, however, as the head basketball coach for Saint Francis University from1945 through 1966 and was inducted into the inaugural class of the Blair County Sports Hall of Fame in 1987.

In addition to his accomplishments on the basketball court, Hughes was a fierce competitor on the golf course, winning 13 club championships at Blairmont. He won his first in 1939 and notched a final victory in 1977 at the age of 65.

At Sinking Valley, the 1970 club champion was George Czap, a teacher and football coach at Tyrone high school. A native of Philipsburg, Czap attended Clarion University, where he was co-captain of the school’s undefeated 1952 football team that won the Lions Bowl in Salisbury, North Carolina.

Later in life, golf became Czap’s favorite sport. On Labor Day 1970, he clinched his second club championship victory with a 54-hole total of 238, good enough for a three-shot victory over Huntingdon’s Fred Beatty.

On that very same day, the club championship at Park Hills Country Club was coming to a close. After four rounds of stroke play, 55-year-old Bob Palmer took home the championship trophy.

The victory was Palmer’s fourth, and final, title at Park Hills. A former resident of New Castle, Palmer was instrumental in attracting many friends to play during the early years of the Park Hills Classic, a tradition that endures to this day.

Palmer’s son, Bob Jr., played in the Classic for over 40 years, winning the 1969 edition with partner John Dimuccio.

Gallitzin native Leon Madey was Summit Country Club’s champion during the summer of 1970. The victory was Madey’s third title at the Cresson-area club. In each, he battled Summit stalwarts like Jack Calandra, Elwood Rhodes and Bob Overberger in order to come out on top.

Madey learned to play golf as a young boy while caddying at Summit Country Club. He would go on to enjoy a long career as a teacher and basketball coach at Penn Cambria High School. Madey would go on to win Summit’s championship again in 1974, 1978 and 1979 for a grand total of six club titles.

Rounding out the champion’s list among local courses in 1970 was John Kerila at Iron Masters Country Club.

Kerila, a native of Greensburg, relocated to Blair County in the mid-1960s as a sales manager for the local Sears department store. He had already won club titles in 1967 and 1968 before meeting Reverend John Mullen of Williamsburg in the 1970 championship match.

Solid play, including four birdies, allowed Kerila to secure the champion title in 1970, the last year that Iron Masters used match-play format to decide its club champion. Long-time Iron Masters member Duane Geisler lost to Kerila in an early-round match in 1970.

“John Kerila was probably the best ball striker I ever saw at Iron Masters,” Geisler said. “He was a natural. He could hit shots I’ve never seen anyone else hit, and he was one of the best putters around.”