These guys are good.

You hear that all the time, if you watch any golf at all. The PGA Tour plays up the fact that the golfers on the professional tour are good golfers.

No kidding.

But I’m not even talking about those guys right now, because those guys can finish dead last and make more in four days than I do in a month. The guys I’m talking about are the golfers I got a chance to watch this week at Biddeford-Saco Country Club at the Maine Amateur. Fourteen of those golfers hail from our own tri-county area, with a handful each from Auburn’s Fox Ridge and Martindale clubs.

The top three finishers this year all played in the final group, with 17-year-old Ryan Gay of Pittston, a senior-to-be at Gardiner Area High School, out-dueling past champions Mark Plummer and Ricky Jones to claim his first of what will likely be multiple major amateur tournament victories. His wing is smooth and polished, and his focus is unflappable.

Unless his good buddy Plummer cracks a joke.

I guess it should surprise no one that Plummer, a 13-time champion who is now (gasp) six years removed from his last title, has taken young Ryan under his wing. The pair golf out of the same golf course, and Plummer has certainly accomplished many great things in his career, including staring down Tiger Woods at a U.S. Amateur. He can now add role model and mentor to that list.

And Gay is starting early. Plummer didn’t win a Maine Amateur in his teens. Gay has.

Lost in all of the Maine Amateur hoopla, perhaps, is the fact that Ricky Jones, a two-time champion in his own right, will next week travel to Colorado for the U.S. Amateur Public Links Golf Championship at Murphy Creek Golf Course in Aurora.

Jones outdueled two other solid Maine golf products – Joe Alvarez and Jesse Speirs – to get there.

In a few weeks, we’ll see another brand of solid golf return to the area in the form of the Charlie’s Maine Open at Fox Ridge.

These guys are good, too.

Jones has claimed victory in that tournament as well, which include playing professionals from across the country.

With all of this golf, it’s a wonder anyone has time to watch the sport on TV at all.

For golf, I suppose, we make the time.