2017 – Week 18
I was on stay-cation this week so I was able to arrive to the course a little earlier than usual to hit a bucket of balls. Unfortunately for me, the storms arrived just as I did and a few other golfers waited it out on the patio and clubhouse. While we were waiting, I started conversing with another golf league commissioner for another company and he stated that his Thursday night league has been rained out 5 or 6 times this season. I told him the GCCGL remarkably hasn’t been rained out all season despite the bad weather. That is what makes this league different. At any rate, Thunderstorm Thursday came and went and somehow we managed to get in the Battle Golf event without anyone getting wet.
The Battle Golf event was another hit. It is such an unpredictable event. You never know what can happen. The key to the event is winning that first hole and taking your opponent’s putter. It is the opinion of some in this league that if there is ever to be a (10-0) match play skunking, it will happen during the Battle Golf event. I started to believe this as Mr. Robinson took club after club from me. As a matter of fact, I was down 5-0 before I knew what happened. He took the putter after the first hole of course. I was set up perfectly on the 2nd hole after a really good drive but my second shot trickled into the sand trap into a puddle of water. Has anyone ever lost a ball in a sand trap? I did. The Senator and I were combing that puddle like a team of scuba divers searching for a dead body but we couldn’t find it. So I lost my ball and my driver after posting a double bogey because I 3-putting because I lost my putter. You see where I’m going here? It starts to mushroom out of control. I was in good position on the par 3 for a tap-in bogey but Robinson sinks a 10 foot bender in the side pocket and stole the hole. I knew then that it was going to be a long night. So he takes driver #2 which I never even got to hit. Now I’m teeing off with my 3-wood and lost the next hole and of course my 3-wood. Robinson takes the next par 3 after sticking his drive smack in the middle of the green and now my pitching wedge is history. Down 5-0 and running out of clubs, I’m thinking, well it’s probably fitting that the first 10-0 skunking will happen to the founding commissioner of this fine establishment of a league. Luckily I parred the next 3 holes with basically nothing but a driving iron and a sand wedge. However, I did not take my putter back when I had the chance but instead took Robinson’s putter, then his driver which allowed me to crawl back and reclaim just a little dignity and wound up with 3 ½ points. Overall, I can’t complain about shooting a net 35 without a putter for 8 holes and without a driver for 7 holes. The purpose for this little summary is to point out how quickly a Battle Golf match can get away from you. Even so, it is still unlikely that we’ll ever see a 10-0 skunking in the GCCGL in our lifetime.
In other Battle Golf news, Crowe is definitely feeling the “league effect” in his rookie season. Crowe has yet to check a box in the win column and is currently 0-11-1. The last time we had someone go winless for an entire season was Cupcake 0-7-1. I don’t know about you but I’m pulling for Crowe next week during his match with Marge. Sorry Marge but it’s more about Cupcake holding this record than it is about rooting against you. Is the MOW Jinx real? Perhaps we should put it to the test next week.
Snoodles enacted the Goldenberg Rule during his match with Big Donkey. There’s been some rumblings that this may have been planned between the STC/ROVER leaders to build some cushion between STC and DD? Was this truly injury or contrived conspiracy? We haven’t had a single controversy all season long. We need something. We NEED this to be more than Snoodles coming back too early from a broken arm. We NEED to think that Big Donkey has been scheming this devious and absolutely brilliant strategy for weeks now and that some money has exchanged hands. The proverbial fictitious seed has been planted. Now all we can do is feed it with some fertilizer and hope it grows into a big beautiful full blown controversy. I smell the next week’s survey question.
More interesting statistics from this year’s Battle Golf
- The person who won the first hole and took the first club won 10 of the 12 matches. That pretty much says everything you need to know regarding the strategy for the Battle Golf event.
- 83% of the league shot net par or better compared to only 71% last week when all clubs were in play. So apparently playing without certain clubs somehow improved the overall average score for the league. This one is hard to figure out especially since about half of the players or more were not playing with their putter.
Clarification – It was mentioned in Cupcake’s weekly results email that PW had something to do with this week’s survey question, “Who has the prettiest feet in the GCCGL?” I can assure you that PW had nothing to do with this bizarre and disturbing query. The question is, which one of the other two stooges were responsible? I know it’s hard to keep coming up with survey questions. I get it. It is very difficult coming up with something to blog about each and every week in this crazy golf league of ours. But seriously, you boys couldn’t come up with something better? We have a total solar eclipse happening this Monday, August 21st at 2:29pm. Surely we could have come up with something less disturbing like “What GCCGL member is more likely to eclipse their feet with their belly?” Or “Whose bald melon head is more likely to block the sun?” Anything would have been better than prettiest feet? Am I wrong?
The big winners were Young Guns who whipped Just End the Season (25-15). They were led by Miller who added another 6.5 points to his season total. Also, Miller has moved to the top of the Winning PCT race by .077 over PW. YG has a 32.5 point lead over Strait to Church and can mathematically clinch the championship next week. STC defeated ROVER (23.5-16.5) to increase their 2nd place lead to 5.5 points. They were led by Big Donkey and Syndrome who both took 8 points. Cousin’ Joe ran into some really bad luck. He shot a net 30 and won low net and still only managed 3 points. That is unheard of. The reason was because of a late substitution for VanPelt (Verst). Verst shot a net 25 for an 11 under par! Are you kidding me? That HC will certainly start heading south a couple of strokes minimum. Tough break too since it knocked CJ off the point’s leaderboard and pretty much wrapped it up for Squirts who has 6.5 point lead over Cupcake. It would take a complete meltdown of monumental proportions for him to lose that lead now. Dropping Deuces squeaked by Birdies, Eagles and a Crowe (20.5-19.5). They were led by Cupcake who grabbed 7.5 points. This sets up a contest between STC and DD for 2nd place next week.
The GCCGL is extending the league to a 21st week to hold our first “open house” week in order to introduce folks to the GCCGL in a relaxed, non-competitive atmosphere so that folks can see how much fun this league is. We need to build up our subs list and hopefully get some more folks interested in becoming full-time members so that we can build a strong reserve in order to keep 24 golfers (6 teams). I will communicate this to the clubhouse at Kenton County Golf Course. Please start recruiting some of your fellow co-workers, friends, family, neighbors, acquaintances, etc. We will send an email to all Highland Heights associates after the Best Ball Scramble.
History Lesson
The last time I was on a stay-cation was almost exactly one year ago. I usually take a week off around mid-August to move my girls to college and check off a few boxes off the pre-Autumn checklist. In today’s history lessons, we go back to August 6th, 2016 which was the 2016 Battle Golf event. But if you are looking to read about how last year’s Battle Golf event went, you won’t find any actual information about that. Instead, you’ll read about the Portuguese Warrior’s adventures during his “2016 stay-cation”. If you are interested, you can read about it HERE. Sorry, no Player Profile this week.
The low net winners were Boot Boy and Cousin’ Joe (A/B) with a low net of 30 and Verst (C/D) with a low net of 25? Great round! Congratulations to the winners! The last match play of the year takes place next week on the Pioneer back. We hope to see you on the course and as always, hit ‘em straight!
George Almeida – GCCGL – Co-Commissioner
