President's Message - October 5, 2020

 Most Valuable Players. Turn In A Great Card. Make it Count.

Lions Clubhouse

One of our goals is to have healthy fun playing golf. Last Tuesday the weather was near perfect and the turn out was nearing 100% of those signing up and then showing up. Let's do it again at Lions this week. Come join the fun.

 

When you sign up as a foursome, we depend on that group to deal with the city courses three-cart maximum per tee time, so one or more of them must walk or share a cart safely. When you sign up less than a foursome, the Saturday committee strives to fill up groups the same way. This is a requirement for us to continue to play during this Covid-19 era. So you riders that have a cart to yourselves for your comfort please hear this!! Volunteers who share a cart and walkers are making this all possible.

So take your hat off and thank them from a safe distance and respect their space on the course. A couple of ways I can think of are:

1. When you in a cart and a walker are approaching a bridge or narrow space let them go first. You can find your ball in the rough soon enough. 
2. If a walker hits their ball in what might be a hard space to find their ball try zooming over and spotting it for them.  Walkers learn the short cuts to the next tee box  and when possible all of us should park our walking or driving carts on the exit side of a putting green so you can move out of the approaching players quicker when putting out. This all helps keeps the pace, but also have a dab of patience. Remember the walkers and the cart sharers are the most valuable players. We need one or more in each foursome to play. They make our play possible. 

Bill Burke, our Handicap Chairman, could write a good humor book about score cards. Did you know that Bill, like all of us on the board and committees, is a volunteer? Bill plays almost every week and in addition has volunteered to take control of the score cards for hole-by-hole entry. He often invests 8 to 10 hours on Tuesday so you can find out if you won some "money' and how you did with your peers. Here is a bit of humor relayed to me--maybe not so humorous for Bill. We had a score card turned in with only first initial of each player, and one hole not added in. On another, two players forgot to turn in their cards, and a third example were a few turned in that were less than legible. 

Why are the scorecards not filled out in advance with names and handicap and why do we not turn in scorecards to the course for them to calculate like in the past? For health reasons and to be able to play we agreed to use standard cards and keep our own scores. It is not that hard to find your handicap on our website and it is not that hard to write the last name and at least the first initial of each player on the card. Bill's preference would be that the two best scorers in each group keep all players on one card each with the last name first and then first name or initial on the line to the left of their score line.  At the conclusion total each and if they match, turn in the cleanest, with the other attesting the scores. Each of you should keep you own score to verify your score. If you decide to keep one card each and cross verify with one scoring and one attesting that is fine, but please, please check your math before attesting. Bill will have a lot more cards to store and enter the data from. Also, don't forget to turn in your score card. In many cases Bill will find a comfortable place to take your cards and key the scores in as he goes once he completes his round. In all cases you can ask the folks behind the counter and they will either take them, show you the box to put them in or tell your where Bill is if he has finished. I was near the end last week and that is exactly what I did. It worked. In some cases Bill may leave and come back to pick up the cards.  But make sure you turn in your card. Make it legible and accurate. In the end you must have a card turned in to count and it is the computer and what Bill reads to enter that produces the final score. Make it Count!!

Remember to wear your mask in the common areas, not just the club house. That is what we agreed with the City to do. When you reach the first tee, separate safely and remove your mask if you like. I am forecasting that you will have more fun this weekend and clean score cards!

On behalf of the ASGA Board of Directors and Austin Senior Golf League, 

Travis McWhorter, President