The Swords of Toledo: dependable, pure, and hard!

The boxer from Mexicali, Mexico should not be here. The youngest of eleven children who grew up in a carboard-metal hut, should not be here. Yet here he is, champion of the Lake Erie Charity Classic on the Nationwide Tour. It is fitting that this victory comes not under the hot lights of the PGA Tour, but in a small town in southwestern New York. Amid the gentle slopes of the allegheny mountains, near a bucolic lakeside town, Esteban Toledo has captured paradise.

Toledo did some exciting things at Findley Lake, like eagling the #14 hole known as the Briar Patch. A remarkable chasm separates the former and latter halves of the hole, yet Toledo navigated all the yards in 3 pithy strokes, to open a three-stroke lead over Jeff Gove. Gove, to his credit, never relented, finishing solo second. It was Toledo’s steely fortitude, like the swords from the city whose name he bears, that won the day on the ridge of Peek ‘n Peak’s Upper Course.

Jim Moriarty, in an article on Esteban Toledo, wrote “… the tallest mountain in the world isn’t Everest. It’s Mauna Kea in Hawaii, because Mauna Kea rises from the very bottom of the sea. Sometimes greatness has less to do with the heights one achieves than the depths from which one has risen.”