2017 – Florida Scramble

I’m feeling a little adventurous this season. So, when it comes to the blog, I’m going to change things up here and there depending on my moods. Some weeks you might get nice George, other weeks you might angry George and every once in a while you might even get bawdy George. My wife loves that George, and so do I. So lay back and relax because I have no idea what I’m going to blog about this week.

The 2017 GCCGL season has officially begun! The weather could have been a lot worst. You could have been in Ollie’s group where, according to Ollie, a single black rain cloud accompanied with high winds followed their foursome, and ONLY their foursome, all over the course. It apparently didn’t stop his team, the J.E.T.S….JETS….JETS….JETS from winning the Florida Scramble in convincing fashion. Keep in mind, this team was predicted to finish dead last by its league members. A little word of advice, don’t pop open the boxed wine yet boys, it’s a long season. You can view the recap of how all the teams finished here.

Speaking of black clouds, Dropping Deuces was dealt a major blow when their substitute A Player (you know who you are) cancelled about 2 hours before tee time. Damn… We knew we were in store for a long night. Playing in a Florida Scramble without an A Player is like binge drinking at a roadside nightclub and scoring with a really cute woman who resembled a younger Julia Louis-Dreyfus but waking up next to Richard Dreyfus. The point is, it can be done but things can turn ugly real quick. I’m not going to belabor the issue. This league cannot survive without a healthy, dependable subs list which is why subs have all the benefits of full-time members without having to pay league dues, except for the Hole-In-One money pot. All we ask is that when you commit to subbing for someone that you honor that commitment. That’s all I’m only going to say about it.

Dropping Deuces finished a respectable -2 considering our official A Player was Cupcake. CC played extremely well by the way as did Kenny G who was subbing for Cletus. And of course, the Portuguese Warrior was automatic on the putting green……from within 4 feet! Yep, I tapped in both our birdies so…. But if I’m being honest, I was terrible! I was as useless as Cletus’ right arm. Actually, I was even more useless. At least he had a cart and was chauffeuring Kenny G around the course.

Things to watch this season include a budding “bromance” between Scratch and Radio. Not sure if any of you caught this but the body language and look in Radio’s eyes when Scratch made that putt on #9 for eagle spoke volumes. The last time I saw that look on someone’s face, it was on Michael Douglas’ mistress as she was stuffing the family pet rabbit into a boiling pot of water in the movie Fatal Attraction. This could be the beginning of a beautiful thing. I’m referring to blog material of course. Andrew Crowe and Mr. Robinson were welcomed to the league by the gallery who let them both have it after coming up well short on their putts on the last hole. I hate to tell you guys this, but it only gets worse from hereon out. The course was in terrible condition. The worst I’ve seen it in quite some time. We’ll give the new course owners and management the benefit of the doubt for now and hope they get their stuff in order.

We have a bunch of new members and subs this season (6 new full-time members). Since we have so many newbies in the league this season, I thought it appropriate to introduce a couple of new segments to this season’s blog in order to catch our new members up on the storied past of the GCCGL. The new segments are called “History Lesson” and “Profile Spotlight“.

History Lesson
We’re going all the way back to 2007 for this one. As many of you know, we upgraded the blog this season and proudly displayed at the bottom is one of our two creeds, “Never Question an 8!” The other one is, “GCCGL, it’s not just a golf league“. We’ll expand on that motto a little later this season. Many of the GCCGL veterans know where the origin of Never Question an 8 came from, but for those of you who are curious, you can read all about it HERE.

Profile Spotlight
As many of you already know, one of the rights of passage of the GCCGL are the nick names that every full-time member receives as well as some substitutes (if you’re lucky enough!). We recognize that it is very difficult for all the new members to memorize all the nick names to know who the heck we are talking about when we refer to Cletus, Lip Gloss, Cupcake, Gobstopper, Cousin’ Joe, Big Donkey, Potter, Meat, Syndrome and Snoodles. Moonboy, Scratch, Prince Albert, Kenny G and Marge. Hollywood, Radio, Scratch, Ollie, Goldie, Boot Boy and yours truly, Portuguese Warrior. I’m sure I’ve missed some, even I can’t keep up with them all. The point is, each of these nick names were “given” to each member by someone, somehow for some reason. Remember, YOU do not choose your nick name, the nick name chooses YOU. So in order to help introduce all our newer members to everyone, we’ll be updating the Player Profiles throughout this season. This week’s Player Profile is Gobstopper.

The winners of the CTP this week were Danny “Snoodles” Roller (A/B) and Ken Glaser (C/D). Congratulations to the winners! We begin match play this week, still on the Pioneer front.  If you like what you’ve read, then join the conversation and leave a comment. All comments are moderated cause we are now allowing anonymous comments and we can’t trust all the knuckleheads out there in Internet Land that may come across this site and try to leave some “colorful” commentary.  We hope to see you on the course and as always, hit ’em straight!

George Almeida – GCCGL Co-commissioner