Jeez, the organisation at your place sounds absolutely shocking.I actually played yesterday...just was too knackered to share.
Club Championships....18 holes in the morning, anyone scoring 85 or better qualifies for the 2nd round in the afternoon. Was organised so that the low guys went out early so they could get the groups sorted for the afternoon and get them out and back in again in good time. First tee was 7:28, I was out an hour later. There were a couple of groups of higher handicappers mixed in towards the beginning to enable club staff to play a round and then get back to prepare lunches and do the scoring.
Off 10, was paired with a couple of guys off 15 and 19 which to be fair I wasnt best pleased about...there were others in my handicap range who went out later (which was surprising, given the desire to get those who would potentially qualify for the second round, back in to the clubhouse early) who could have been grouped with me. The two guys I'd never met before but were decent company, but it was difficult to concentrate on my game as I think I had to get involved in giving advice on the rules and procedure maybe 7 times in the first half a dozen holes, not to mention being a bit of a bloodhound for their errant balls.
Anyway I started like a train.....wreck. Two shots in on the first and I found myself in a fairway bunker on 18, eventually returning to my own fairway to card a bogey 6. A double bogey followed on the next as I donned crampons to scale the face of a greenside bunker and then I found myself 6 over after 4 holes when I thinned a shot from a greenside bunker into a lake and ended up with a treble bogey. By the time I reached the 9th tee I was a wonderful 9 over par.
Then miracles started to happen. A 15ft putt on 9, a ten footer on 11 and a 9 footer on 12 all saw me grab birdies to give a degree of respectability to the score....only some cling film on the edge of the 11th hole stopped it from being 4 in a row. The cherry on the cake came when I holed a 20 footer on the 13th for a par. It could have been even better had I not missed a 3 footer for birdie on 14 after losing focus trying to remove a beetle from the line of the putt...damned thing kept coming back!
Then the magic disappeared...a tough second shot from a hanging lie on the edge of a bunker saw me catch the top of a tree with my approach to the green, the resultant chip from within the trees wasn't good enough, resulting in a bogey 5. On 16 again a poor chip (not enough pace...the greens were a tad fluffy - apparently due to some mower issues!!) saw me drop another shot and on 17 a totally misjudged approach shot saw me find a greenside bunker as I hunted for the flag instead of the center of the green. More bogey woes on 18 after leaving a slow putt well short meant that I'd dropped 5 shots in the closing 4 holes.
Still, an 81 was good enough to qualify for the second round....some way off the pace with the leading pair at 70 and 72, but in with a shout of maybe nicking a lower place. Anyway...entered the clubhouse, returned my card to the scorer....only to be told that there wasn't anyone left that i could play with...all of the current 8 qualifiers had already been sent out for their second rounds. To say I was annoyed would be a bit of an understatement....especially as five other golfers had shot the qualifying score but elected not to go out for the second round.
It looked like the club would have to cajole someone into walking with me as a marker but luckily a guy off 18, playing 5 groups behind me, also shot an 85 and agreed, once he'd freshened up and had a drink and a bite to eat to go out and play the second round with me. It was probably a good hour and and 3/4's after I'd finished my 1st round that we were able to start the second...a good hour behind the two groups of other qualifiers. We did catch them up around the 13th but as neither of us were in any place to threaten anything (apart from maybe a few ducks in some of the penalty areas) we held back and let them get on with the business end of the competition.
To be fair the second round was much like the first, with the exception that my putter went cold and, with the exception of the 11th (someone had obviously removed the clingfilm from the morning round) birdies were absent from my card. Ended up with an 83 for a total 164 which gave me 8th place overall. (Doesn't sound so good when you remember that only 10 people played the 36 holes).
Bit pissed off with some of the organizing decisions, bit pissed off with other golfers who qualified but didn't want to go out for a second round....but got a decent sun tan.
That is absolutely shocking, your club championship and this is how it's run.I actually played yesterday...just was too knackered to share.
Club Championships....18 holes in the morning, anyone scoring 85 or better qualifies for the 2nd round in the afternoon. Was organised so that the low guys went out early so they could get the groups sorted for the afternoon and get them out and back in again in good time. First tee was 7:28, I was out an hour later. There were a couple of groups of higher handicappers mixed in towards the beginning to enable club staff to play a round and then get back to prepare lunches and do the scoring.
Off 10, was paired with a couple of guys off 15 and 19 which to be fair I wasnt best pleased about...there were others in my handicap range who went out later (which was surprising, given the desire to get those who would potentially qualify for the second round, back in to the clubhouse early) who could have been grouped with me. The two guys I'd never met before but were decent company, but it was difficult to concentrate on my game as I think I had to get involved in giving advice on the rules and procedure maybe 7 times in the first half a dozen holes, not to mention being a bit of a bloodhound for their errant balls.
Anyway I started like a train.....wreck. Two shots in on the first and I found myself in a fairway bunker on 18, eventually returning to my own fairway to card a bogey 6. A double bogey followed on the next as I donned crampons to scale the face of a greenside bunker and then I found myself 6 over after 4 holes when I thinned a shot from a greenside bunker into a lake and ended up with a treble bogey. By the time I reached the 9th tee I was a wonderful 9 over par.
Then miracles started to happen. A 15ft putt on 9, a ten footer on 11 and a 9 footer on 12 all saw me grab birdies to give a degree of respectability to the score....only some cling film on the edge of the 11th hole stopped it from being 4 in a row. The cherry on the cake came when I holed a 20 footer on the 13th for a par. It could have been even better had I not missed a 3 footer for birdie on 14 after losing focus trying to remove a beetle from the line of the putt...damned thing kept coming back!
Then the magic disappeared...a tough second shot from a hanging lie on the edge of a bunker saw me catch the top of a tree with my approach to the green, the resultant chip from within the trees wasn't good enough, resulting in a bogey 5. On 16 again a poor chip (not enough pace...the greens were a tad fluffy - apparently due to some mower issues!!) saw me drop another shot and on 17 a totally misjudged approach shot saw me find a greenside bunker as I hunted for the flag instead of the center of the green. More bogey woes on 18 after leaving a slow putt well short meant that I'd dropped 5 shots in the closing 4 holes.
Still, an 81 was good enough to qualify for the second round....some way off the pace with the leading pair at 70 and 72, but in with a shout of maybe nicking a lower place. Anyway...entered the clubhouse, returned my card to the scorer....only to be told that there wasn't anyone left that i could play with...all of the current 8 qualifiers had already been sent out for their second rounds. To say I was annoyed would be a bit of an understatement....especially as five other golfers had shot the qualifying score but elected not to go out for the second round.
It looked like the club would have to cajole someone into walking with me as a marker but luckily a guy off 18, playing 5 groups behind me, also shot an 85 and agreed, once he'd freshened up and had a drink and a bite to eat to go out and play the second round with me. It was probably a good hour and and 3/4's after I'd finished my 1st round that we were able to start the second...a good hour behind the two groups of other qualifiers. We did catch them up around the 13th but as neither of us were in any place to threaten anything (apart from maybe a few ducks in some of the penalty areas) we held back and let them get on with the business end of the competition.
To be fair the second round was much like the first, with the exception that my putter went cold and, with the exception of the 11th (someone had obviously removed the clingfilm from the morning round) birdies were absent from my card. Ended up with an 83 for a total 164 which gave me 8th place overall. (Doesn't sound so good when you remember that only 10 people played the 36 holes
Bit pissed off with some of the organizing decisions, bit pissed off with other golfers who qualified but didn't want to go out for a second round....but got a decent sun tan.
Jeez, the organisation at your place sounds absolutely shocking.
Its not that bad....to be fair we've been trying to find a decent way of organising things for the last 3 or 4 years. Folks attitude to comps has definitely changed over the last few years, folks priorities change and what worked a few years back doesnt work now.
Well explained, maybe learnings for others!
It sounds ok in theory, but sending people out for round two when some hadn't finished round one was a baffling decision, that's what cocked it up. You said they sent the low cappers out early in round 1, but then your group was all mixed handicaps - why not do the whole field in handicap order? That's what my club and I'm sure lots of other clubs do. It sounded like a reasonable outline of a plan, but it hasn't been adhered to properly. No wonder it goes late in the evening when their lack of organisation has seen you going out a couple of hours after the others, so they have to wait for you to come in before doing trophies etc? Or I wouldn't be surprised if they already gave out the trophy before discovering that someone coming in later has beaten them.
341 different golf clubs? That's some feat! Over how long?Not a data analyst and all my 341 are on a spreadsheet too
25 years
Well...what has happened in the past is that someone sits by the 13th green asking for players scores to determine if there are higher handicap players likely to make the cut...then they can feed back to the clubhouse to get an outline plan for the afternoon started. As i mentioned though, volunteers change over time, become more difficult to recruit and jobs that used to get done that made things easier, no longer happen. The guy that shot the 85 who eventually played with me in the afternoon was an 18 handicapper, there were a couple of mid teen golfers who fell just outside but other than that, nobody off more than 10 came remotely close to making the cut....the handicaps of those who qualified for the 2nd round (even if they didnt play) were in score order... 3,5,5,7,7,3,3,9,6,10,9,6,8,9,18. This is a common distribution and it is nearly always the case that we have one of the 15-19 handicappers come in and sneak under the cut line....most of the time they are too knackered to go out again and are content with their mornings work, knowing that they can not contend for the main prizes. Its just a case of the committee making a sensible decision about when to firm up the afternoon groupings...unfortunately this year they did not have sufficient information to allow them to do that properly. I'm sure they wont make that mistake again (I will make sure that they dont!!).It sounds ok in theory, but sending people out for round two when some hadn't finished round one was a baffling decision, that's what cocked it up. You said they sent the low cappers out early in round 1, but then your group was all mixed handicaps - why not do the whole field in handicap order? That's what my club and I'm sure lots of other clubs do. It sounded like a reasonable outline of a plan, but it hasn't been adhered to properly. No wonder it goes late in the evening when their lack of organisation has seen you going out a couple of hours after the others, so they have to wait for you to come in before doing trophies etc? Or I wouldn't be surprised if they already gave out the trophy before discovering that someone coming in later has beaten them.
