2024 – Week 3

Forewarning, if you don’t like this blog post, it’s because I’m writing it at 2:30AM Friday morning. It’s because of the beer hops. I knew it! Bedell and I bought 4 pitchers of beer last night, 3 Coors Light and 1 Truth. They were out of Miller Lite. I drank a couple cups of Truth’s. I love IPA’s. That was a big mistake. It confirmed what I basically already knew, the IPA beers are what wakes me up in the middle of the night. Let’s back up for a moment and let me explain since we have a lot of newcomers this year. PW has this affliction where if I drink beer after 8pm, I wake up WIDE AWAKE usually around 2:30AM as if it were 7:00AM. There is no going back to sleep once I’m awake after this happens when drinking after 8pm. Seriously, if this isn’t the most ridiculous thing you’ve ever heard of. I feel like one of those gremlins in that movie…….um….Gremlins! Yep, I feel just like a little, fat, Portuguese gremlin who can’t drink after 8pm. At least the “real” gremlins got to live it up until midnight! Well, I’ve learned my lesson. 

This is a real physiological condition that apparently many people have. It wasn’t always this way for me, it started sometime in my mid-40’s. Anyway, I wrote a 2018 blog post about it, they call it the Rebound Effect in case you’re interested. At any rate, I have confirmed that I’m actually fine when I drink Miller Lite or Coors Lite after 8pm. I did this the first two weeks and had no issues. Yesterday, I drank Truth which is a bit hoppy, not to mention 7.2% ABV (compared to 4.2% ABV for Miller Lite). This is my problem. If I lay off the IPA, then I can partake in the post-round libations without sacrificing critical beauty sleep. And let’s face it, I can use all the beauty sleep I can get these days.

It was a good week. Good attendance, good weather and I got to see some folks for the first time this year like Hays, Kramer, Gosney and the “most trustworthy GCCGL commissioner”, Jason “Cupcake” Nill. Speaking of Cupcake, I’ve been toying with this idea for a long time and thought the time was right to bring it out now. Introducing a new section to the GCCGL blog, Cupcake’s Cupboard. That’s right, you have Kreyling Korner, and now Cupcake’s Cupboard. However, let me get something straight right away. Cupcake has no intention of adding anything else to his GCCGL responsibilities. And I don’t blame him. He does a LOT of work for this league. He and Kreyling do way more than I do. I basically do nothing but write about nonsense once a week and send an email. Jason and Kurt do all the heavy lifting during the season, especially Jason with that freaking master spreadsheet of his that no one understands or knows how to use. Over time, we will be building a Cupcake’s Cupboard section where you can go and view all the amusing little antidotes from this late forties, father of three (or four?). How many kids do you have now Cupcake? It probably won’t be updated every week, but when it it is, I recommend opening the cupboard and taking a look. It will take a little while to build out this new section but in the meantime, we’ll give you a little peek into what you can expect from Cupcake’s Cupboard. Go ahead, click on the cupboard to see what’s in store for today.

There really isn’t a whole lot to talk about this week. It was pretty uneventful. We did have our first match against the CARD (with the new CARD rules). The Politician played Bill “Patient Zero” Nixon’s card this week and with the new Playing Against the CARD rules, beat the card 6-4. It pays to get a sub. Speaking of new rules, we are making an addendum to the Scramble Sub rules for the D Flight.

Due to the large disparity between handicaps in this flight, the commissioner’s office thought it appropriate to make a modification to the rule. The new rules for getting a sub for the D Flight during scrambles will be to take the average score of all the members of the D flight and that will be the target score (within 3 strokes). As stated, this really is only necessary for the D flight. Of course, if your D player’s handicap is a 10, then you can get a sub as low a 7. This modification is to help find subs for those with higher handicaps.

For example, the D Flight average handicap for all 6 players is 19 (see below)

J. Allen  – 10
Tally – 12
Arjun – 39
Delgado – 20
D’Angelo – 14
Winkler – 19

Therefore, in this scenario, if Arjun needed a sub for a scramble, he can try and find a sub no better than 16 (3 strokes). Handicaps change all the time so make sure to look at the handicap report if this scenario ever presents itself to your team.

The George vs George match didn’t start out well for PW. George Welling came out firing on all cylinders paring the first 3 holes! Before I knew it, I was down 3-0 heading to the 4th hole where I was giving a stroke to George W. I was staring at the first ever official 10-0 match in GCCGL history. Oliver, I know you beat the CARD 10-0 a few years ago, and we all still hear the stories from that magical evening, but that was against the card so it is not official. You gotta do it against a live human being. But PW survived the early onslaught mostly due to following my own Game Day Ritual advice (GDR). I just played my game which apparently right now consists of a lot of bogeys sprinkled with a few double-bogeys. Yada, yada, yada, somehow, someway, George W. let me win the next few holes and I wound up winning the match, proving once again, it’s better to be lucky than good.

As many of you know, next season will be the 30 year anniversary of the GCCGL. In the immortal words of former president, Donald J. Trump, “It’s huge!” If you have any ideas you’d like to share with the commissioner’s office, Lip Gloss and Cupcake have kindly volunteered to take any and all requests in email format. The big winners this week were Vanilla Gorillas who pummeled Cranes, Trains and Automobiles (25 – 15). They were led by Armando Delgado who nabbed (7.5 pts). Drawshank Redemption defeated Party of Fore (22-18). They were led by Muench and super-sub Kramer who squeaked out 6.5 pts each. The Low Net winner for (A/B) was Matt “The Politician” Bedell with a low net of (36) and for (C/D) Jason “Just Call Me” Kramer with a low net of (34). Contratulations to the winners! We continue Match Play this week but with a twist! It is the annual Pot Luck event where the A/B flight plays someone from the C/D flight. Names will be randomly selected a couple days prior to the event. The schedule is set. Good luck everyone. We hope to see you on the course and as always, hit ’em straight!

The Portuguese Warrior – GCCGL co-commissioner