Greetings from the Illinois Valley Country Club!
In this week’s action:
The new leaf blower lived up to its cost and helped me to blow all the wet piles up the hill on #9 fairway, and in doing so, they dried out enough to burn them all. I also got to finish the fairway on #6 and the breeze blew that fire all the way to the outhouse so that cleaned up a ton of them. Then I went around #6 green and blew them into the woods and then tackled #4 green and fairway. John showed up with Colby’s little handheld and we were able to get all of the leaves and most of the fallen pine branches burned up on Saturday. It sure is nice not to have to search for your ball in leaf piles around the greens!
Monday afternoon we had Todd, Eugene, Colby, Matt, Danny, Dustin, myself and a couple guys who we hadn’t seen all winter—Scottie and Dalton. We had 6 shots on the green on #10 but no birdies. Colby and Graham took pars on #11 so no skin there. On #12 Eugene got a birdie for the first skin. Dalton, Matt and I put drives on #4 green but no birdies there, Dalton got KP for $8. We had an amazing 4 shots on the difficult #14 green in two shots, but nobody could sink a birdie putt. Colby got a birdie on #15 from the back tee for a skin. On #16 from the front tee and over the pond, we had 4 guys drive the green. Todd and I were closest with Colby and Graham also on, and he generously split the KP money with me rather than measure. On #17 we had Dustin, Me, Danny and Eugene all put one on from the teebox, Danny got the cash and he said that that is the first money he has won in about 5 years. On #18, Graham put one on and pretty close and then sunk the birdie putt for the last skin. A great day and everyone played beyond winter expectations.
After blowing all those leaves and getting the machines turned off, Me and John could hear voices over on #3 green so we meandered over and caught up with Roland, Colby, David, Scott and Eugene so we decided to play 2-man scramble format with John, Roland and I taking on the other guys.
Scramble uses a format by which everyone hits a tee shot and then the best shot is selected for everyone to hit again, we keep doing that until the ball is sunk. This eliminates the really bad shots and speeds up the game a bunch—a good thing, because we didn’t get started until 4 and the sun wasn’t sticking around to wait for us to finish so it got cold FAST. David, Eugene and Colby beat us by two holes.
Sunday the weather was fantastic, only 5 guys showed up to play but Ron Hults came out from Grants Pass and drove around with us and we all had a great time—until the wind came up and it felt like Alaska suddenly. It showed because on #9 we all had double bogies. Scott was the last guy on the green and we had all putted out but he didn’t know we had finished with 7’s so he didn’t really try to sink his last putt, which would have been a 6 for the last skin, so Todd walked off with all of the KP and skins money—again. Jake and I hung out at the base of #9 and the wind suddenly died and we stood there and just marveled for a while about the incredible beauty of the course and enjoyed the afternoon sunshine. The playoff game between Cincinnati and Kansas City was on in the clubhouse so a few of us enjoyed that to wrap up a great day at the club.