2017 – Week 17

Only three weeks left! We had a near perfect day for golf (a little warm for PW) and near perfect attendance. This is normally around the time of year where we review The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the GCCGL season. So here we go!

The Good
If there was any doubt at all as to who was going to win the 2017 GCCGL Championship, it was put to rest this week as the first place Young Guns completely annihilated ROVER (29 – 11) increasing their lead to a whopping 31 points. Of course, they have not mathematically clinched it but it’s over. Say what you want about Squirts. He put together one of the best performing teams in GCCGL history and is having himself a great season too. YG was predicted to win the whole thing way back in the pre-season predictions. This makes two years in a row where the GCCGL commissioner’s office correctly predicted the GCCGL champion.

Only 7.5 points separate the top 5 point leaders. Squirts has the slimmest margin of a lead (1 point) over Cousin’ Joe who has put together a great season himself. CJ owns a 10-4 record and is tied for 7^th on the money list. CJ had something to prove after falling all the way down the draft board to the 4^th round. It turns out he was a steal and is the primary reason Strait to Church is sitting in 2^nd place.

Rounding out the top point getters:
3^rd – Cupcake (80 pts)
4^th – Miller (78 pts)
5^th – Portuguese Warrior (77.5 pts)

Squirts is also leading the pack on the money list ($66) with Cupcake and Meat right behind him. I told you the kid was having a great season. Finishing out the top 5 money leaders are Snoodles (4^th) despite being on the disabled list for part of the season and Big Donkey (5^th).  

The race for the Winning PCT title is heating up between Miller and the Portuguese Warrior. Both players have 11 – 1 records for a .917 winning percentage. This is even a bit more impressive when you consider that both players have missed a couple of match play weeks and have played in 12 out of a possible 14 matches. 

The Bad
Once again the old adage of “A team with a bad name, will result in a bad team” couldn’t be truer with team Roll Over and Van-Pelter in the Eiser (ROVER). Arguably, the worst team name in the history of all team names (and we once named our teams after Seinfeld characters!). This team was predicted to finish 2^nd but instead are sitting tied for 4^th place with Just End the Season (JETS). So whereas the league’s prediction on ROVER was WAY OFF, it was DEAD ON with the JETS. We told you that this team would be praying for the season to end by this time in the season and we were right. The only good thing this team did all season was trade Potter for Meat. So far the trade has pretty much been even with Meat enjoying a +1 points advantage but remember, there was the matter of bacon and wine thrown into the mix. Speaking of wine, let it never be said that Syndrome welches on a promise. He made good on bringing the wine to Ollie and formally presented it to him after the round this week. 

The Ugly
You know what’s coming. Just when you thought no team could be worse than the 2016 Gamblers Fallacy team of (Lip Gloss, Cupcake, Meat and Hollywood). Birdies, Eagles and a Crowe (Prince Albert, Crowe, The Senator and Robinson) will struggle to reach the 300 point mark this season. They are 121.50 points behind the first place team which is currently shattering the record set by Gambler’s Fallacy(102 points behind 1st place). They have only 11 match play wins and haven’t been out of the cellar since May. However, this team is still fighting for the remaining few scraps of dignity left. They put up a hell of a fight against the 2^nd place STC team this past week narrowly losing (21 – 19).  

The biggest surprise of the year has to be Dropping Deuces. This team was supposed to finish dead last. Jokes were flying around before the season started about how bad this “all commissioner” team was going to be. No one barked at the creation of a team before the draft which has NEVER been done during the draft era. But here we are with three weeks left in the season and DD fighting hard for 2^nd place after defeating the JETS (25.5 – 14.5). Who would have “thunk” it? They currently own the best match play record of all the teams. If not for getting screwed by a no-show sub in the Florida Scramble, who knows, we might have some resemblance of a race this season. 

Speaking of surprises, did I ever tell you about the surprise my oldest daughter and I encountered a few years back when we were visiting colleges? We drove up to Cleveland to visit a college she was interested in and decided to stay downtown. As we were checking in, things looked fine and the girl at the counter just upgraded us to a suite on the top floor and thanked us for being a hotel club member. I felt so special and my daughter thought I was cool! It was a long drive so we got cleaned up and then got ready to head downtown for dinner so that we could get back at a decent hour. After all, my baby girl was going to tour a potential college. It was going to be a big day. We got in the elevator and headed downstairs. We were the only two in the elevator when the elevator stops on the way down and a man walks in, wearing a black leather tank top with matching leather shorts and a hat…..yes, a leather hat. Around his neck he sported a leather dog collar with chrome spikes and a chain attached from the collar down the front of his tank top and clipped to his shorts. Surprisingly, I didn’t notice what he was wearing on his feet. I couldn’t get past the dog collar.  

We were coming from the top floor of a very tall building so we had plenty of time for silent awkwardness. My daughter, who was 17 at the time, took it all in stride. We made no eye contact or facial expressions to each other the whole ride down. When we finally got to the lobby, the door opened and we walked out. As my daughter and I walked outside to wait for the shuttle, she discreetly asked me, “Did you catch the dog collar?” As our shuttle arrived, we just figured the dog collar guy was just going out to a costume party until our shuttle arrived and out came three guys dressed like the Village People. OK….something is up. We got in the shuttle by ourselves and asked the driver, “Um, sir, is there  a convention or something happening here?” He did not look happy and sounded a bit perturbed by the whole thing but he filled us in.  As he was explaining the situation, I realized that our shuttle driver must have been a distant relative of  Archie Bunker. OK millennials, click the link and find out who Archie Bunker was.  

Of all the weekends in a year to pick, of all the hotels to select and of all the cities to visit, I picked the one weekend, the one hotel and the one city where the second largest GLBT leather convention, Cleveland Leather Awareness Weekend (CLAW), was taking place.

My daughter and I laughed it off and had dinner at a good restaurant recommended to us by our new bigoted “friend”. We did not cast aspersions, the driver was a nice enough old man. He had to be in his seventies and just grew up in a period where society was a little less tolerant of these things. My daughter tried to educate him as best she could.

When we got back, the lobby, which was completely quiet and unassuming a couple of hours ago, was now host to a raging party and hundreds of others (men and women) clad in leather outfits, dancing to techno music and drinking mimosas. I saw a man wearing nothing but diaper. Well, it looked like a leather diaper (to me). We took in the atmosphere while waiting for the elevator and went up to our room for the night. By the way, none of this bothered us at all. We were just surprised by it.  I grew up in the NYC area and have visited Greenwich Village more times than I can count. It is a great quaint neighborhood with friendly people, great entertainment, music and food. If you are ever in the city and have a couple of hours to kill, I highly recommend it.

So there you have it, another PW story completely un-related to golf or the GCCGL. This is what happens when there is little to no blog material. I’m definitely going out next week after the round. I gotta get some scoop for this blog. I’m dying over here!

The low net winners were Lip Gloss A/B) with a low net of 27 and Cupcake and PW (C/D) with a low net of 31. Congratulations to the winners! We continue match on the Pioneer front with the popular Battle Golf event this week. Make sure to have your cameras ready and take a lot of pictures and videos. There are bound to be some classic moments next week and I’d love to catch them for the blog. We hope to see you on the course and as always, hit ‘em straight!

George Almeida – GCCGL – Co-Commissioner