Author Archives: Michael Liotta

July 21, 2023

What do gelato, porchetta, pizza and darts all have in common? Well, golf of course. More specifically the Grandravine Charity Classic golf tournament. That’s right, as golfers started arriving, mouth watering porchetta on a bun, with or without the hot peppers, was being served up by our gracious volunteers. Just what you need to put some power in that tee shot. Then top it off with an espresso, gelato or, better yet, an Afocado from I Love Gelato.

Conveniently located right across from I Love Gelato was the Golf Dart game, presided over by Grandravine Special Hockey players Mark Liotta and Joseph Egizii. The rules are simple. Hit three tennis balls with a unique oversized golf club onto a giant Velcro blow-up dart board and add up the score just like regular darts. It may or may not improve your chipping game but it is a lot of fun. The winner was Nick Pugliese with a score of 106.

So you wanna eatzza some pizza. No problem. Eatzza My Pizza was serving up delicious wood fired oven pizza just as the golfing got started. Just what was need to keep you going till dinner.

It may seem like this tournament was all about food but there was some golfing to do. After a cloudy and windy morning the skies opened up and the sun emerged as a record 200 golfers teed off at 1:00PM. Along the way there was the $10,000 hole in one contest. Sadly there were no winners again this year, but we did have a few people though take home prizes for the longest drive and closest to the hole competitions. And once again the foursome of Frank Parisien, Mark Jefferies, Dave Rathan, and Dunkley Grier dominated with a score 11 under par to win the top prize. I think next year they should have to play with the golf dart clubs.

The day ended with a delicious dinner buffet in the Cardinal club house. Grandravine president Joe Rizzuto and myself presided over the prize presentations and raffle draws.

There are many people that go into putting on an event like this. First of all, I couldn’t do this without the help of my wife Luci. Long with Luci there is a large crew of hard working volunteers that made sure that everything went smoothly from registration to the final raffle.

I would also like to thank our two photographers Terry Mancini and Vasiliy Ryabykh and Top Drawer Images who volunteered their time to take the group photos and all the other photos you see here.

This year we returned to Cardinal Golf Club. Despite the heavy rain from the night before and some puddles on the fairways they managed to get the course into a very good condition. The other facilities were all wonderful. I want to thank Jason McNally and all the cheerful, helpful staff of the Cardinal Golf club for a wonderful day.

Then there is Coro Electric, our tournament partner, and driving force behind this event from the beginning. I want to thank Mike Corvinelli and Alessandra Corvinelli for all the hard work they put into this tornament and more importantly I want to thank them for all the “HEART” they put into it.

And, of course, I want to thank all the participants and sponsors who come out support us year after year. They are true friends of Grandravine.

Prize Winners

BEST SCORE: Frank Parisien, Mark Jefferies, Dave Rathan, Dunkley Grier

MOST HONEST SCORE: Alessandra Corvinelli, JessicaDiBiase, Rob Leonardis, Alessandro

WEST WING – CLOSEST TO THE PIN: Frank Altonare

WEST WING – LONGEST DRIVE: Matt Moretin

EAST WING – CLOSEST TO THE PIN: Joe Vira

EAST WING – LONGEST DRIVE: Tyrus Rathan 

A Special Thanks to Our Dedicated Volunteers