SUNRIVER — Dan Heater had nothing but good things to say to Lyndon Blackwell on the 18th green at The Woodlands course at Sunriver Resort.

“Nice job partner,” Heater congratulated Blackwell after he had just cleaned up his birdie putt. “Good finish.”

Moments later on this sunny and cool Wednesday afternoon, the two Bend golfers walked off the back of the green, smiled and gave each other a fist bump.

Heater, 58, was not just being overly friendly with his 52-year-old playing partner. In this game of best ball during the first round of the Pacific Northwest Men’s Senior Team Championship, anything Blackwell did benefitted Heater, his teammate and longtime friend.

In many ways, Heater and Blackwell are indicative of the 80 men and 75 women — including players from around the Northwest and Canada — playing this week at Sunriver in the men’s and women’s Senior Team Championships. (The 54-hole women’s championship ended Wednesday, the same day the men’s championship began.)

Not because Heater and Blackwell are both former Central Oregon golf professionals who regained their amateur status years ago, but because they enjoy the sort of camaraderie that a team format such as this presents.

“It takes a lot of pressure off,” said Blackwell, who combined with Heater to shoot an 8-under-par 64 to share the first-round lead. “Both of us played well today, so for several of the holes we had two chances at birdie. So instead of sitting over the putt and white-knuckling it, we had a lot of good runs at it.”

No team had better runs on the pins than Mary Sias and Jackie Nelson.

The Portland-area duo posted a 10-over-par 73-77-74—224 (two rounds of four ball and a second-round Chapman) to win the women’s championship Wednesday by nine strokes. Bend team Cece Patterson and Mary Jensen finished in third place and Crooked River Ranch team Selma Cusick and Evie Spring finished eighth.

Playing well together is something Sias and Nelson have become accustomed to. Friends from a Portland golf group for women with handicap indexes of 13 or less, 61-year-old Sias and 65-year-old Nelson have built a rapport with each other from years of team golf.

“We love to play together and we love team events,” said Sias moments after their final round at Sunriver’s Meadows course. “If you have a partner that you are comfortable with and that never gives up, even when we are horrible, then it is just the best thing in the world. But if you don’t mesh with a partner, then it can not be fun.”

There is a trick to playing team golf at a high level.

For Sias and Nelson, playing well comes down to being friends with your playing partner and possessing similar golf skills.

And Nelson and Sias know each other well, completing each other’s sentences at times like an old married couple.

“We know each other’s game, we can read each other’s putts and we can help each other do things,” Sias said.

Then Nelson interrupts: “Yeah, we club (distances) about the same. That always helps in a partner game. Or at least know them so you know how to help them.”

Heater and Blackwell know each other well, too, from their days as PGA professionals.

It served them well Wednesday.

“We kind of know each other’s strengths and we know how far we each hit the ball so we kind of feed off that,” Heater said.

Blackwell added: “I love team competition. I think it is more fun. It’s definitely different.