June 21, 2012 Results

Amidst a threat of rain that unfortunately for a parched region never materialized, 105 of us teed it up at Eagle Springs, the golf course at the North County Recreational facility. This course was in excellent condition, the best I’ve ever seen it. The greens were a delight to putt on and the fairways were very, very good. It’s a good thing they’ve put resources into the course because if it looked like the clubhouse I’m afraid our playing conditions wouldn’t have been too good. I was a bit disappointed in the condition of the facilities but then I guess you can’t expect too much from a public-run place. I know it used to be better but now for some reason the building is starting to show its age and of course the employees probably don’t really care. It might need a woman’s touch, in spite of what some of you might say.

Anyway, the course played fair and the greens definitely ran true. And the weather really cooperated in spite of the realization that we do need moisture, desperately! Fortunately we did not encounter stifling heat and I think everyone made it through without heat exhaustion. It guess we still have that to look forward to .

This was our second week of flighting the results and if it’s still not clear to everyone how this is done it’s a matter of putting the scores in nearly equal groups. Because of tie scores more often than not you’ll find more scores in some groups than others. The lowest score in each group, or flight, wins that flight and is awarded the first place prize of X amount of money. Each group, or flight, is given a pot of money to be divided between the first, second, and third place teams. The money pots are the same for each flight, ie. first place in A flight gets the same amount as first place in D flight, etc., etc.

If two or more teams tie for the lead in a flight one of the 18 holes is selected at random (in our case numbered chips in a bag) as a tie-breaker hole. Lowest score on that hole determines the winner of the flight. If no team wins that hole outright the next hole in succession is used, etc., etc., until one team wins a hole outright thus the winner of the flight is declared. Today, for example, in C flight 4 teams had the same score while vying for first place. When all the dust settled from the tie-breaker format 3 teams were decided as 1,2,3 in the standings with the 4th team being out of luck. Now wouldn’t you know it, ours was the 4th team!! Now I’m not so sure I like that system. And to make matters worse, I was the person who blindly selected the tie-breaking chip out of that $%^&*#ing little bag of chips.

The rest of the story:

A Flight was won by the overloaded team of Mike Rutherford, Duane Jefts, Joe Mullins and Paul Scheffer. These guys pounded their way around the course in fine fashion with a -11. I guess Duane was on his game today. We were in front of them and I think I spent more time watching for “incoming” than watching our shots to the greens in front of us. On 18 I thought we were out of any mortals range at over 300 yards off the tee. So did Duane, but hit it he did and he managed to imprint the EZ-Go logo on his ball as it came thundering into our cart way down the fairway. When he got to his ball he found it half buried in the fairway thanks to some persuasion from a size 10 Foot Joy. That must’ve fired him up because he put his next shot 3 feet from the pin for an easy eagle and the only skin of the day. Very nice shooting guys, but the chances are pretty good Messers Rutherford and Jefts might just be on completely different teams for the rest of eternity. But, computers do screw up once in a while so you never know

Second place in A flight was a real tug-of-war between 4 teams shooting a -10. So, the old tie-breaker trick was employed and low and behold the John Boyd, Bob Pahmeier, Del Lohmann, and Dan Ottoline team came in second and the John Prather, Bob Foeller, Dave Rapp, and Charley Wilson team came in third.

Also rans in A Flight, but still with great scores of -10 were the Randy Pratt team and the Phil Hess team.

In B Flight with a sparkling -9 came the Bob Day, Gene Erard, John Murphy, and Tom Murphy team. Bob Day has evidently resurrected his once spotless game and for sure Tom Murphy has been licking his chops for weeks knowing that we’d “force” 75+ year olds to hit from the front tees. This guy can easily overpower a golf course so you’d better hope that the computer randomizes the pairings with your name next to Mr. Murphy’s in the near future.

In second place with a 64, and again winning in a scorecard playoff, was the Dan Snowden, Rick Palloni, Bob Kriss and Lew Rosenbaum team. Tying with them but not winning (sounds better than losing, doesn’t it?) the playoff was the Ron Muse, Bruce Schnelle, Jerry Mullen, and John Ross team.

Also in B flight we had the Charlie Pope team with a -7, the Bob Franke team with a -7 and the Steve Dierker team with a -7.

In C flight, as mentioned earlier, we had 4 teams with identical -6’s. In the scorecard playoff we had the Jack Eckhard, Joe Jarvis, Ollie Sivcovich, and Paul Villhard team winning the shooting match. In second was the Don Giarraffa, Jeff Delaplain, Frank Greening, and Jim Mead team. In third was the Russ Wall, Alex Horvat, Dennis Meade and Rich Graeff team.

The Doug Nolte team also at a minus 6 picked the short straw and lost the scorecard playoff. The Lou Pessoni, Tom Gill, Art Soble and Larry Willman teams all posted -4’s.

In D flight the Ed de la Peña team at a -3 won a scorecard playoff with the Dennis O’Connor team. Ed’s team had Dee Ridenhour, Don Moschenross, and Bob Thibodeaux while the Dennis O’Connor team sported Doug Torrie, Dave Gillett and Casey Szpak. Finishing in third place with a -2 after the scorecard playoff was the Bob Edwards, Charlie Fischer, Ron Maniscalco and Dennis Swift team. Other teams in the -2 scorecard playoff were the Roger Danielson, Pierre Sans Souci, and Bert Schott teams. The Dan Fergus team came in at a +3.

We had one other team somewhere in the mix but we never located the scorecard. Rumors were that the Tom Wulf team was a -3 but not having the card didn’t help with the confirmation.

Awards;

Closest to the pins for the day; #4 Paul Villhard #8 Duane Jefts #14 Larry Amen #17 Jim Hawkes

Skins: #18 Duane Jefts team with an eagle 3