Here you'll find the latest news of recent events held by the Old Back Nine Men's & Women's Golf Club.

Welcome, Old Back Nine golfers! Welcome to CLUB NEWS, our replacement for the now-retired TeeD UP! newsletter of past seasons.

As you know, we're no longer sending out a weekly newsletter. It’s been replaced by several pages under the NEWS and EVENTS sections on this website. Here’s a quick list of where to find the latest: 
 

• For Tuesday’s scores, click on CASUAL ROUND RESULTS on the dropdown menu under the EVENTS tab, or click here. Or, if it was a 2-PERSON TEAM event, click here. Looking for the results of a FUN GAME? Click here. For fun game events, you might also want to check out the CASUAL ROUND RESULTS mentioned previously, if the fun game was played in concert with a casual stroke round.
• For photos from Tuesday’s event, click on PHOTO ALBUM on the dropdown menu under the NEWS tab, or click here.
• For the $2 contest results, click on the TWO-DOLLAR POT WINNERS on the dropdown menu under the EVENTS tab, or click here.
• For previews of upcoming events, click on the EVENT PREVIEWS on the dropdown menu under the EVENTS tab, or click here. 
• To read about past events, including last week's, continue on below.

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July has arrived and we're off with a bang! Oh, wait that was on Saturday. Anyway, read on for news updates as July events unfold.

Be aware that, starting in July, as we enter each new month we'll be rolling off the earlier month's articles from the bottom of the website pages, so as to keep the entries (and server memory) manageable. If you think you need some of the older month's entries, let us know and we can supply you with an antiquated newsletter-style PDF version. Cheap.

Now, on with the show!

Tuesday, July 7th news:
 
A warm morning kicked off our first July session. Thirty-seven members and two guests joined us for another casual round on Tuesday. Check out the results on the CASUAL ROUND RESULTS page using the EVENTS tab dropdown, or click here.
 
Welcome back Laurie and Tom Gsell, returning from their cross-country trek.
 
Just remember: If golf relaxes you, you’re either not keeping score, properly medicated, or playing with expectations set to zero.
 
I believe, based on recent progress, my situation lies with the last entry.

Tuesday, June 30th news:
Looking toward the approaching July 4th weekend, we have plenty to celebrate. Among these things are memories of Tuesday’s large friendly crowd of golfers sharing stories and comradeship under mild blue skies. Thirty-seven members and a guest found joy in playing a low-stress game chasing little balls with sticks.

Just remember: One good hole is all it takes to ruin your plans to quit golf forever.

So, was it the new 4-hybrid that I’d just purchased to cure myself of the long-grass shot woes? Nope. To be fair, I managed a couple of really good strikes, allowing recovery from poor tee shots. But also, there were a couple of wayward efforts, as I lost concentration and pulled the ball massively left, adding further strokes to my score as I took a drop, or just chunked the ball back onto the fairway. 

Was it that chip from off the green on #17 close enough to salvage par? Nope, not that one either. Just your average up and down. 

It was that putt to finish the round on #18. Sixty feet, below the hole, curling true along the entire arc of its track, perfect speed, dropping dead center with a satisfying thunk against the pin before it disappeared. Birdie, salvaging my under-50 round. 

That’s the hole that will bring me back next week.

With three months of the season behind us, we thought we’d give you an idea of how the league is faring. We started in April with 59 members, a record number for so early in the season – and that number has held steady so far. In fact, two new golfers who joined at the end of June brought the membership to a record number 61. The average league attendance and scoring stats after Week 11: 

This next table is a look at how we’re doing as golfers. Heck, isn’t that why we play this silly game? What follows is a look at each week’s results: average gross scores, average handicaps for those golfers that participated, and the resulting average net scores. As the trends from week to week aren’t all that evident, we’ll decide later in the year whether these numbers show improvement or not.

Tuesday, June 23rd news:
We continue to host good-sized crowds as summer gets underway, maintaining an average of over 30 golfers attending every Tuesday morning, representing over half the membership. On this warm Tuesday morning, we blended a casual golf round with the $2 contest and a fun game: fewest putts per round. For the results of the putting contest, you can go to the FUN GAMES link on the EVENTS dropdown, or click here. To find score results, including gross and net scores, go to CASUAL ROUND RESULTS on the EVENTS dropdown, or click here.

Tuesday, June 16th news:
Yep. Summer is here. Temps are getting warmer earlier and a bit sooner than we’ve been used to. Did the 80+ degree limit the field? Nope, 33 members and a guest showed up for a casual round on Tuesday. And we’re feeling a bit lazy today, maybe a carryover from the round.  Not much else to offer except for getting to the scores. You can click here. Or go to CASUAL ROUND RESULTS under the EVENTS tab on the main menu.

Tuesday, June 9th news:
June’s 2nd Tuesday 2-person tournament, with 16 teams participating, was played in the Chapman format. That’s one confusing game if you’ve never played it. At least until you’ve golfed a few holes and you and your partner have gotten into the rhythm of it. After that – easy peasy. Still, wouldn’t it be great if we handed out clear, concise and unequivocally accurate instructions?

After 3 or 4 years of trying to explain this game, this editor thought he finally had the right instruction set so that there would be no confusion. Well, that was only half right. The wording that went out with the pairings email wasn’t quite correct. The third instruction for alternate shots was misleading, giving the impression this might be a form of scramble tournament – which it is not. Our apologies. However, the rules posted on our webpage – well prior to the event – are correct. They split that third instruction in the email into two, making the intent clear. In fact, there are two versions on the webpage that appear in sequence, the second with a bit more detail than the first. (Perhaps we should strike one?) An example follows them. Take a look under the heading “Chapman Format” here. 

Apologies for any misunderstandings. Maybe next year we’ll remember to go to the webpage for text instead of editing old emails on the fly. 

You can find the tournament scores and winners here, or choose 2-PERSON TEAM RESULTS from the dropdown under EVENTS on the main menu.

Here’s an unrelated suggestion when you play this particular game: Before you tee off on the first hole, make sure your partner knows which ball you're playing (Titleist 3, Calloway 4, etc.) and its color.  That way, when partners switch balls for the second shot, your partner will know that they are hitting the correct one. Plan on updating them if you change balls or lose one and have to replace it. 

Why do we bring this up? Our group had a mix-up right out of the gate. One pair, without naming names (okay, this editor), didn’t think about declaring to his partner which ball he would be playing. Consequently, his partner ended up playing the wrong ball on the second shot. It wasn’t clear that this had happened until the other team continued to look for one of theirs, having hit that particular tee shot onto a similar part of the left rough. After much confusion, and then multiple replays of each golfer’s tee shot, we came to realize what had happened: assuming the first ball he came across in the direction of his partner’s tee shot was the correct one, that ball – the wrong one – was sent further down the fairway for shot number two. Which is why the other team kept looking for theirs. Finally, the correct ball was located in deeper grass along the same line of flight as the other one.

The issue here is that the appropriate course of action is to share with your partner which ball you’ll be playing. Besides the inherent delay, hitting the wrong one incurs a two-stroke penalty. 

Further unsolicited advice: if you switch balls, or lose one and have to replace it, make sure you’ve communicated that to your partner as well.

Moving on: Tuesday’s shot of the day? Could be Ginger Kuhlmann’s chip in to take the ladies’ $2 pot on #15. Or maybe it could just have been Joe Vassallo’s tee shot on #11 that put the ball less than 2 feet from the pin, leaving his partner, Jim Moran, a tap-in for birdie. This editor is going to display bias on this choice for several reasons: 1) Ginger’s chip wasn’t accomplished in the normal stroke portion of her round; 2) Ginger was rewarded with cash for her fete, not to mention the glory accompanying our webpage mention (see our TWO-DOLLAR POT WINNERS page), along with being memorialized by her permanent placement in the $2 Pot Winners list; and 3) this editor observed Joe’s effort in person, bringing that certain feeling of inclusion as a witness to the act.
 
Lunch!
Tuesday’s lunch, hosted by our Handicap Chair, Deb Dupuis, featured tasty brats, buns and beer, along with all the right condiments – including Rod “R2” Rowland’s lip-smacking pepper relish. Good stuff, Rod! Thanks.
 
We also distributed a free drink coupon for all participating members. Considering the price of a beer in the clubhouse has gone up to $6, we basically paid the beer drinkers among us $1 to imbibe! 

Tuesday, June 2nd news: 
Thirty-one golfers chasing little white balls on a fine morning in early June. The sun quickly warmed the field, loosening muscles and sharpening tee shots . . . Oh, wait, that last sentence was from the opening paragraph of the historical fiction we’re writing. Perhaps Ben Hogan’s muscles were tuned by the warming sun, but ours, maybe not so much. But, you can find the real news about Tuesday’s event by clicking on one of the links above, especially the CASUAL ROUND RESULTS, TWO-DOLLAR POT WINNERS and PHOTO ALBUM links.