Adams is Kernwood ladies champion

It was a battle, but Carol Adams was up for the challenge in this year’s Kernwood Country Club Ladies Club Championship.Adams and Molly Hoffman went at it for 18 holes Thursday, with Adams finally putting the match away on the final hole to take the 2008 title.”It was a tough match,” Adams said. “It kind of went back and forth the whole way. She (Hoffman) was up early on.”Adams, who lives in Marblehead, cited a couple of key holes that proved crucial in the win, one being the 12th, where she made a nice sand shot and putted for par, and the other the 18th hole.Adams she was two-up heading into the 16th hole, which she and Hoffman split. Things got really interesting when Adams lost the 17th hole, but she rallied on the 18th, winning the hole and the match.”My tee-shot (on the 18th) was that great, but I made a great shot out of the rough onto the green,” she said, adding the ball landed about six feet from the hole. She made the putt to seal the victory.”It was really close,” Adams said. “It (the match) could have gone either way.”Adams, a former tennis player, has been a member at Kernwood for five years and has been playing golf for about eight years. She said the thing that impressed her the most about the whole experience was the support she received from fellow club members.”The highlight of the day, the biggest thing, was the support from the community at Kernwood,” she said. “People were cheering and being very supportive.”Cracking the top spot on the women’s side at Kernwood hasn’t been easy for a long time because it meant finding a way to get past Tami Bane. Bane won the Ladies Club Championship 16 of the last 17 years, but this year she opted not to compete, Bane said.Although she’s still playing golf and doing it as well as ever, Bane said she didn’t feel she had anything left to prove to herself when it came to the club title.”I wanted to do some other things in golf,” she said, adding that she and her husband, Rich Bane, spend a lot of time golfing in Florida during the winter.For Adams, there are still a few more things left on her “to-do” list this summer. Her next challenge will be winning the Ladies Senior Club Championship.