SMI NewsBrief
by Jack Garrity (aka Mr. Smooth)….Monday, November 16, 2015
The 221st match in the Senior Men’s Interclub series was played today at the Deerwood Country Club. The field consisted of 117 players representing 15 member clubs. Bruce MacDonald, who is our league secretary and one of the two Queen’s Harbour reps, graciously volunteered to act as Tournament Director for this 2015 Championship event. Bruce (right) and Tim Cooper PGA (left), Deerwood’s assistant golf professional, handled the preround announcements and launched 30 carts onto a first-class course. Great job all around!
Special thanks are due to Deerwood’s staff for taking great pains to prepare for today’s event, in particular: Head Golf Professional, Jim Lohbauer PGA; Assistant Golf Professional, Tim Cooper PGA; Golf Course Superintendent, Paul Rio CGCS; Food & Beverage Manager, Matt Hoffman; and Catering Director, Lisa Cameron. And what would a day on the course be without the opportunity to quench one’s thirst or satisfy one’s hunger, each of which act serves as a performance multiplier? Thanks to Danni and Nikole (l-r) for manning the beverage carts on their appointed rounds.
TODAY’S COURSE
Each month we coordinate the course layout with the host course’s golf professional. As shown below, the layout prescribes hole-by-hole yardages, pars, and handicap stroke allocations. Now and then, as was the case today, our scorecard may differ from the over-the-counter scorecard handed out in the golf shop. Our scorecard is the official one!
Charting today’s scores against those made last month at Marsh Creek (see below) suggests the latter course presented a sterner test or Deerwood hosted a more talented field. Take your pick! You might consider these facts: 57.1 percent of the players at Marsh Creek and 36.8 percent of the players at Deerwood beat their handicaps. On the other hand, the average player at Marsh Creek scored 35 points and 1.3 strokes below bogey while the average player at Deerwood scored 34.6 points and 0.5 strokes over bogey. Go figure! But dare not suggest those high-end outliers at Marsh Creek were padding their handicaps.
CUTTING EDGE COMPETITION
Today’s event was a dual contest consisting of our usual monthly competition as well as our annual faceoff for the Barney Poston Cup. This was the ninth time the Cup has been contested at Deerwood Country Club.
In the monthly event, we competed to determine the top four teams on the day; each of the winning teams’ players received a golf-shop merchandise certificate. In addition, for each par-3 hole, the player who landed closest to the flagstick received a sleeve of golf balls.
In the annual event, we competed to determine the top six teams on the season, each of the winning teams received a cash prize while the first-place team also took possession of the Barney Poston Cup won last year by Magnolia Point. In addition, the player with the longest drive on a selected par 5 and the player with the most Stableford points received a dozen golf balls each.
It was a perfect day for golf. Play started at the 9:00 a.m. shotgun under clear, calm, and 69-degree conditions; the first scorecard was returned at 1:42 p.m. by which time the temperature had risen to 78 degrees and conditions had changed to mostly cloudy skies and breezes gusting to 12 mph. The order of finish for the monthly and annual events is summarized in the following tables.
Tournament Director Bruce MacDonald awarded merchandise certificates redeemable in the Deerwood golf shop to the top four teams in the monthly competition and League Chairman Ray Mantle rewarded the top six teams in cold, hard cash:
Bill Ross MP, as captain of the defending champions, was on hand to relinquish their year-long possession of the Barney Poston Cup to the newly crowned champions from Hidden Hills, shown in the official team portrait below.
Congratulations to the Hidden Hills players present for the photo op above and to their absent team mates who scored many of the points leading to their team’s victory: Walt Altman, Ron Arledge, Tex Blinn, Bob Deason, Rick Haskew, Dave Vince, Bob Whaley, and Fred Whatley.
To round out the awards ceremony, Bruce MacDonald and Ray Mantle announced the results of a random drawing for 52 door prizes. Each player in the 2015 season was credited with one ticket stub for each round played.
MOST IMPROVED PLAYER
Appendix H in the USGA Handicap System manual offers a method for determining a league’s most improved player at the end of a season. Using this method, the following chart shows the top 10 winners for each of the past two seasons.
WINNING TEAM LEADERS
Generally, a “big gun” helps his team into one of the top four places by scoring at least 40 points. Today 14 players scored 40 points or more; seven of those were on the prize-winning teams including Jon Peterson OC who won today’s special prize for most points in the field. Among those not on one of the four winning teams, John Grams EH scored six birdies to pull into a tie for sixth place on the all-time records list.
INDIVIDUAL LEADERBOARD
Twelve different odds-breakers filled the twelve slots shown on today’s individual leaderboards (below). In all, 48 players in the 117-man field overcame the odds associated with their handicap indexes. Isn’t that fair or what?
PREMIUM SHOTS
SKILLS CONTESTS
TOUGHEST HOLES
On average we take 96 pickups at each event. Today’s course forced us to take 107 pickups, the thirty-third highest total in league history. One of our tougher days, heh! The all-time record, 225 pickups, was set at Ponte Vedra Inn on 12/10/2010. We registered two pickups on Hole no. 2, today’s second easiest.
NEXT MATCH
ALL-TIME LEAGUE RECORDS (At least six rounds)
Our performance database is based on 17,115 scoring records dating from 2002. The underlying statistics continue to show the league consists of five flights, designated as A through E. These flights are divided into 19%, 26%, 25%, 19%, and 11% segments, respectively. Individual odds are based on division-by-division statistics.
FINANCIAL NEWS
Dave Noble DC, our league treasurer, filed his latest end-of-month report in the table below. Dave will bring us up-to-date at the league’s semiannual meeting on December 17 with an outflow of cash for the Poston Cup finale.
WEBSITE NEWS
by Barney Poston
Recently Google deposited $119.82 in my bank account. I’ll be giving that amount to Dave Noble at the next match or at the semi-annual meeting. We have made an additional $9.82 in the past 28 days. That amount will be held by Google until we earn $100. It appears that you guys are clicking on the Google ads more frequently than you did in the past. We may want to reconsider dumping the ads from our website. Meanwhile, keep on clicking the ads.
Our domain name (Jaxsi.org) ownership expires in January 2016 if we do not renew it. My guess is that we will renew it for 2 years at least. That will cost us $30-$40.
