2015 – Week 9

Sorry for the delayed post this week. Between last week’s rainout and Father’s Day weekend, there wasn’t much blog material or time.

The skies looked ominous before tee time and the radar definitely had a whole lot of red heading our way but a few minutes before tee time, the rains let up and had stopped long enough for the GCCGL to tee off relatively on time. Although everyone teed off, unfortunately the only group to really finish without getting a soaking was the first group who most likely got drenched on the putting green. The skies completely opened up and torrential rains poured down on us still out there! We tried to hit our second shots but it was impossible. We had no choice but to pick up our balls and walk back to the clubhouse. At this point, even if the rains had eventually stopped, the darkness was going to get us. The result was the GCCGL’s first rainout since April 28^th, 2011 according to my records. We’ll have to verify this with our regular statistician, co-commissioner Cupcake when he gets back. So the bad news is we got rained out but the good news is we technically still have perfect attendance since week 9 doesn’t count! We had 22 of 24 golfers show up in the rain including a record 6 subs for this season. A big thank you to Meyer, Tucker, Lane, Gall, Schemmel and Francis for braving the weather.

Most of the leagues had already cancelled their league play by the time the GCCGL arrived at the golf course. That’s what I love about this league. Folks just want to play golf and have fun as long as it is physically possible to do so. Believe it or not, we’ve played in worse.  One of my fondest memories of this crazy league was back on August 9^th, 2012. That was the day I realized how special this group of golfers really were. We wound up playing a full round of golf and were the only league on the course all night. If you don’t remember this night or are new to the league, take a minute to read the blog post from August 9^th, 2012.

We are officially half way through the 20^th anniversary season of the GCCGL.  These next few weeks of the season will go a long way in deciding who will win the coveted 2015 GCCGL Championship. We will be playing two scrambles in four weeks! This is the first time in GCCGL history that we’ve done something like this. We start with a new event to the league called Pink Ball next week. This event will require some upfront strategy which will go a long way in how the round goes. The rules are simple. On each hole one player plays the pink ball all the way into the hole, and the other three play a scramble. On the next hole another player plays the pink ball. The rotation must stay in the same order. This is key. You must choose your order and stick to it threw the entire round. For example, if you start with the traditional order of (A,B,C,D) then the A player will play the “pink” ball on holes # 1, 5 and 9. The B player would play the “pink” ball on holes #2 and 6, and so on. You cannot change the order midway through the round. Final score is calculated by adding the pink ball total with the scramble total. For example, if the player playing the pink ball shoots a 5 on the hole and the other three players shoot a 4 then the total score for the hole is a 9. The scores will be calculated at the end of the round in the clubhouse. One clarification regarding handicap holes. The commissioner’s office has debated whether each hole being played by the “pink” ball player would be handicapped. After much deliberation, it was decided that we will not be handicapping the pink players’ golf holes. It was a tough decision but one we hope is the fairest for all teams and provides the most amount of strategy for selecting your team’s rotation. Another factor the decision was because even though this is a unique scramble, we’ve never handicapped other scrambles in the past. Let’s see how it turns out. The league will either love it or hate it. Another question that has come up several times, do we need to use a pink ball? No. The “pink” is metaphorical. If you’d like, you can bring pink balls for your team or just play your normal ball.

The regular scramble rules apply this week. See the Witzgall Incident in the GCCGL rules for more detail. We tee off on the Willows front nine once again this week. Please be on time. As you may or may not know, the Summer Solstice was this past Sunday, June 21^st. You may be asking yourself, “PW, why do we care when the Summer Solstice was?” I’m glad you asked Mr. Golfer. After the 21^st of June, we begin losing a little daylight each and every day. I’m not saying we are in danger of running out of daylight anytime soon….I’m just educating our members and stating a fact. We hope to see you on the golf course and as always, hit ‘em straight!

George Almeida – GCCGL Co-Commissioner