Well the 2017 season came to a grand conclusion at Poppy Hills as Louie Des Rochers finished ahead of all the other contenders shooting a very solid 88 for a net 70. Yes, you read that right, a net 70 was all it took to win. Where were those guys getting 30+ strokes? Farther back it seems.
The match play championship will be happening soon and pits Jeff Kahn against Ryan Peralta. I understand there is a plan to have the event at Cinnabar Hills. Perhaps they would like to have playing companions? Check with either Jeff or Ryan.
The annual banquet will be at Chris Feetham's house (address below) this year on December 2nd, a Saturday. The menu features prime rib. Starting time is 6 pm for cocktails and dinner at 7 pm. Beer and red wine will be included but if you want anything other than that, please feel free to bring it along with you. Please let Jeff Kahn ([email protected]) know by November 18th if you will be attending and if you will be bringing a guest. Cost is $30 per person. Please remit payment as you would for a tournament.
Matt Willis has been busy working on our 2018 schedule and it is shaping up nicely. As usual we will be looking for tournament chairmen to sign up at the banquet.
Finally, if you are interested in serving on the board, please let me know as we will be electing next year's board at the banquet.
Rolmex Members, See below message from Cinnabar Hills Golf Club:
Cinnabar Hills Golf Club would like to extend an offer to you and Rolmex GC in hopes you want to come out and play this coming week. Your members can book a tee time between Monday June 12 – Sunday June 18, 2017, at any time, and get 15% off the online rate. At times, this is over a 50% reduction in rate.
Select the day and time you wish to play, along with the number of players in your group.
On the next screen, click on the “Promo Code” button. Enter Tourn1 as the promo code. The rate will automatically adjust. You would pay the booking fee as usual and then pay the green fee in the shop when you arrive for your tee time.
Accompanied guests (up to 3 per group) are welcome to join at the same promotional rate
Please forward this to all your players. Once again, thank you for choosing Cinnabar Hills for your tournament and we hope you will book with us again in the future.
Well, we have had a bit of a rough start. I can’t remember having to cancel a tournament before in advance because of mud slides, road closures and flooding. But that’s what we had to do for the Aptos tournament. It was a decision we didn’t want to have to make but we pretty much had no choice. I think we will be free of such problems for the remainder of the year. On the plus side, we had Jeff Kahn’s hole-in-one to celebrate at Coyote Creek. He is very proud of this accomplishment. Just ask him when you have an hour to kill. We made some rules decisions at the end of last year that are not reflected in the web site rules. If you have some time, you can see the whole set of rules here. However, let me highlight a couple things. The most significant change is that we changed the wording of the “Rolmex Drop”. It used to say that if you lost a ball in some area and you didn’t want to go back, you could drop a ball in that area with a two stroke penalty. However, the wording was changed to say you can drop within two club lengths of the area the ball was lost in. Having to drop into an unplayable area was deemed to punitive. Another change was to simplify the wording of the 9/3 rule to say you can take a 9/3 at any time, before, during or after the hole is played. Yes, this does potentially create some twisted scenarios, but it was deemed that simplicity was paramount here. We are glad to hear people’s reactions to this decision. Note that the USGA has just come out with a new set of proposed rules that will take effect in 2019. The long delay is because the rules have to be reviewed, commented on and tweaked. However, the general trend of these new rules is to make the rules more logical, fairer, easier to remember and to help speed up play. Some examples of changes:
You no longer get a penalty for hitting the flag stick with a putt (so no taking the flag out just to tap in or no need to wait for someone to tend the flag when you have a 60 footer).
Water hazards will now be called “penalty areas” and any area can be designated a penalty area. Lots of courses already do this today. In fact, many do it without bothering to mark these areas (the new rule stipulates that such areas still need to be marked). We will have to see how we decide to work this going forward.
You can now take an unplayable for a bunker and drop outside the bunker.
Embedded ball relief is now available in any “general area” (which is the new word for “through the green”).
Time to look for a lost ball is now 3 minutes, down from 5.
And there are many others. As these new rules take effect, we will dedicate more time to explaining how they affect our tournaments. Look here if you want to see more for yourself. I was listening to PGA tour radio and they were interviewing Mike Davis of the USGA and he said that they were coming up with new terms for things because they were finding that certain phrases such as “through the green” just didn’t translate easily or well when providing non-English versions of the rules. Interesting. I think we’ve seen the last of Tiger as a serious competitor. That’s a sad thing for me personally as I used to love to watch him do his thing. I’ll never forget watching him live hit a 3-wood second shot on the 18th green at Pebble Beach from behind the pine trees in the fairway (it must have been like 290 yds). And I’ll never forget being with my father-in-law following Tiger around at the US Open at Torrey Pines on Sunday and Monday in his epic gimpy battle with Rocco in 2008 (thanks again for the tix Kevin!). Speaking of Tiger like performances, our own Tiger, Clem Cooper, has had his own problems lately.
At Coyote Creek, he played the wrong ball (penalty!).
At Laguna Seca, he played from the wrong tee box on the second hole (penalty!).
Then at the same tourney, he incorrectly took a drop for a two stroke penalty leading to a 9!
Clem, did perhaps Maureen come after you with a nine iron last fall? Speaking of Maureen, our handicap chairperson, she has written up the rules for scorecard submission. Please take a minute to read this; it follows below. Note that the officers and tournament chairpersons used to provide labeled individual scorecards for everyone. We are not doing that anymore as it just takes too much time. Instead, it is your responsibility to get a card, write your name on it and indicate which tees you are playing. Please do this before you tee off and give it to someone else to track your score on. Note that you can’t even necessarily depend on there being cards for you on the first tee, so grab one in the pro shop. It’s your responsibility. A Word from Your Handicap Chair About Scorecards We had some issues after Coyote Creek but I figured people were just rusty so I sent individual messages about the problems to the people involved. But we had just as many problems at Laguna Seca, including one card that was not signed and another that was not turned in. I have not yet disqualified anyone for their lapses but we need to get everyone back in shape and turning in proper cards. I am going to set out what I need from you here. Ideally, each player should have his own scorecard with his name and handicap on it and a gross score for each hole. At the end of the round, the score should be added up and the total noted on the card. The same for putts. Technically, you are not responsible for addition; this is why our tournament results are not considered final until the results are published on the website. The player’s marker must sign and the player himself must sign. Since we are playing skins this year, after the results of the tournament are announced, players are retrieving their cards to figure out skins. If you do this, you must make sure your card is put back in the pile of cards that I take home. Otherwise, I will not have a card for you and you will end up disqualified. This is important because I need to check your posting and without your card I cannot determine if you have adjusted your score appropriately. Some of these things are rules of golf, like having your card signed by yourself and your marker. Some make life easier for me, such as having only one person per card and putts clearly set out. It would be wonderful if we could all try to do this. The Prez
Canyon Lakes Tournament - 3/11/2017
CANCELLED - Seascape Tournament - 2/25/17
Laguna Seca Golf Ranch Tournament - 2/11/2017
Coyote Creek Tournament -1/28/17
Presidents Message (1/29/2017):
What a fine start to 2017! Attached is the open-bar celebration occurring after Jeff Kahn's hole in one at number 14 on the Tournament Course. "It was back into a stiff wind so I grabbed my 4 hybrid, choked down a bit and hit a lovely drawing shot that landed on the front and rolled boldly back to the hole where it disappeared over the horizon of the cup", he said with double top-shelf Scotch on the rocks in hand.
January Newsletter
Happy New Year! It seems just like the other day that we were welcoming in the next century and now it is 2017. Go figure. Anyway, this is a momentous year for me as I will be 58 and it marks the first time that shooting my age is at least theoretically possible since Ryo Ishikawa shot a 58 on the Japan Tour. What does that have to do with my game you ask? Nothing! OK, back to reality and another year of Rolmex competition.
Welcome to the new members. I'm sure you will find that Rolmex will be to your liking. We are serious but not too serious. The number one goal is to have fun.
We have a few winter tournaments coming up and if the weather continues as it is, we will be playing in wet conditions. But, that doesn't usually stop us. The first tournament is at Coyote Creek Tournament Course. Well, probably my least favorite place because:
a) No walking allowed (okay, Jack, just because you have a beer gut, the rest of us have to?) b) Free drop from water hazards (huh - isn't that called cheating?)
We had our annual general membership meeting at the December year-end banquet and the following were the significant matters covered:
1) The better ball competition will be changed from a $3 entry fee per person to $5. 2) All the money collected at each tournament for better ball will be paid out to the winning team at each tournament. This means the better ball championship has no prize fund. The trophy is your prize. 3) We will conduct a voluntary skins competition at each tournament. A skin is won if you have the lowest net score on a particular hole when compared to all other competitors. There are no flights here and there are no "carries" as occur in heads up skins. Buy in is $20. Payout occurs at tournament end. 4) The board is largely unchanged. The one change is that Louie is stepping down as Tournament Director. At the banquet we elected Matt Willis as his successor.
As recommended by the USGA, we will also be adopting the local rule that says if you accidentally move your ball or ball marker on the putting green, you can replace it without penalty. What, golf becoming more reasonable?
We are still a wee bit short on where we'd like to be in terms of membership, so please help us out by trying to recruit new members.
Notes...
Kevin is the Treasurer. Please send all sign-ups, checks, PayPal payments and anything else to Kevin. His contact info is now posted on the tournaments page on this website.
A few tips that will make Kevin’s job a little easier:
Be aware of sign up deadlines. Sign up well in advance whenever possible.
Submit payment for green fees at the time that you sign up rather than bringing a check to the course. This helps with the club’s cash flow and also keeps Kevin from having to be a collection agent on the day of play.
Use PayPal, if possible. Designate the payment as being “to a friend.” Not everyone has or wants a PayPal account, but if you have one, use it for payment. You save on postage, the money gets into the club’s account faster and Kevin doesn’t have to keep track of, and remember to deposit, all those pieces of paper.