The really important news first. The ASGA Board of Directors voted to change the way the ASGA Annual Tournament Champions will be recognized. The Annual Champions will be determined in two categories. The ASGA champion will be the player with the lowest gross score in the tournament. A tie for the championship will be settled between the players by having them immediately engage in a sudden death playoff.
A new Net Champion will also be named. The Net Champion will be the player with the lowest net score in the tournament. A tie for the net champion will be settle by a Western Scorecard Playoff beginning with the 18th hole.
This is a big change from the previous method. The ASGA will no longer award a runner-up and instead crown a Net Champion. This means that every player in the association will now have the opportunity to be named the ASGA Net Champion and like the Gross Champion collect a lot of monetary awards. For all other players, net scores will be used to determine the flight winners.
Now for the not so important but interesting news. This month two ASGA golfers experienced both the joys of hitting a great shot and the perils of learning the results of the shot. In one case it was a near miss and in the other a startling realization.
First Michael Bieck, who, on the Kizer golf course at hole #13 used an 8-iron and hit his ball to what appeared to be a hole-in-one. He had paid his HIO fee and was more than ready to collect the lucrative money prize. Alas, his excitement and that of his playing companions, Floyd Chambers, Roy January, and Mike Bruker was quickly tempered by finding that the ball had stopped short by one inch.
The other episode involved Terry Rodriguez, a former Hole-in-One winner, when he made an even better shot than Bieck and put a ball into the hole on the #8, 138-yard hole at Kizer in the same tournament. It was at this point that Rodriquez realized that he had failed to pay his HIO fee.
