It was a good day for both of the teams that Smith Printing sponsored Saturday at the 11th annual St. Jude Benefit Golf Tournament at the Duncan Park Golf Course.

Randy Martin, Johnny Moore and Raymond Steele teamed up to win the championship flight of the three-person, 27-hole event with scores of 30-28-29 for a total of 87 and a one-shot win over two teams.

“We appreciate Eric Smith from Smith Printing for sponsoring us,” Martin said. “On the first nine, we shot five-under. We stayed patient. We started getting birdie after birdie. It was a really good team effort. Everybody on our team played well.”

The Popeye’s team of Charles Mardis, K.G. Watkins and Bubby Bruce had a 27-hole score of 88 (30-30-28) and ended up finishing in second place on a scorecard playoff.

The Smith Printing team that consisted of Smith, Anthony “Poochie” Kent and Craig Cotton wound up in third place. Smith, Kent and Cotton had nine-hole scores of 28-29-31 for their total of 88.

“We played good. We didn’t putt very well,” Cotton said. “We appreciate Smith Printing for inviting us to this tournament.”

“We almost saw Poochie Kent win a truck,” Smith said. “On No. 13, Poochie hit the pin and ball set about 12 inches from the hole. That was the highlight shot of the day.”

Not if you ask Wade Heatherly, who teamed up with Trey Dickey and Jody Helbling to finish seventh in the championship flight.

“The highlight of the day was watching Wesley Rogers hit a 320-yard drive on No. 17 to win the longest drive. It was a thing of beauty,” Heatherly said.

The Entergy team of Travis, Bill and Jared Leggett took first place in the first flight with a 27-hole total of 97. They won on a scorecard playoff over the Fernwood Country Club team of Ronnie Boone, Balfour Lipscomb and Charlie Dunagin.

There were several changes made for this year’s St. Jude Benefit Golf Tournament, tournament chairman Moe LeBlanc said.

“Number one, we eliminated mulligans to speed up play,” LeBlanc said. “We drew the raffle tickets and stamped them to the raffle items.

“We also had for the first time ever a ball drop. We dropped a bunch of golf balls from a helicopter. Ronny Novak was in the helicopter piloted by John Goodrich. They hovered over the green on No. 2 and 101 golf balls were purchased by the golfers.”

LeBlanc went on to say that the ball that was the closest to the hole received a round of golf at Tamaka Trails Golf Course at the Paragon Casino in Marksville, La.

“This year was probably our most exciting because we shortened the time by one to two hours,” LeBlanc added. “I can’t say enough about the community and the sponsors who put in the time. We’ve also had business that donated $400 as a corporate sponsor.”

Altogether, there were 38 three-person teams that participated in this year’s tournament.

“We’re ecstatic about the turnout, the response we had. Every year it keeps getting bigger,” LeBlanc said. “We’ll write a check to St. Jude that will surpass last year. Last year, we wrote a check for $10,000.”