Happy spring greetings from the Illinois Valley Country Club!
OK, looks like finally we will be getting the spring weather going. Men’s Club will be starting our twilight league starting April 17 and 19–whoo hoo!
I missed putting a column in last week as my daughter and her friend invited me and Tracy to go on a cruise out of Los Angeles and down to Puerto Vallarta, Matzatlan and Cabo San Lucas. I initially declined but they reminded me that it would be Spring Break so I accepted. I passed by a nice golf course in Cabo and heard that they have several there, so I looked them up. They look really nice. Perhaps we will set up a Cabo travel tournament for a few days next spring.
Last week a few of us did get out onto the course in between the rainstorms. Poke, Danny, Matt Stone, Eugene, Colby and I were the only takers. Poke birdied #12 for the first skin. Colby sunk a par putt for a 3 on #13 for the second skin. We had 3 pars on the difficult #14, which is wonderful but no skins. Poke put a shot onto the #15th green on his second shot that ended up only 10 feet from the pin for an Eagle attempt and nearly sunk it but settled for a birdie for a skin. Eugene got par on the over-the-water shot on #16 with a nice drive on the fringe of the green and a near miss for birdie for a skin. This left three open KP attempts and almost $18 in the KP pool to be decided on #17. The drama thickened as we all attempted a close shot. We ended up with 4 balls landing on the green but Eugene came out victorious and took the cash. He did fail to make his birdie putt I might mention so no skin for Eugene. On #18, I somehow hit the fairway twice and got my ball onto the backside just off the green on my third shot. I eased my chip shot and ended up maybe 12 feet from the cup. I was dealing with grandkids in the cart and didn’t see everyone’s putts but they told me that they had 2 pars, so my shot would not count. I calmly tapped the putt and it ran across the green and clunked into the cup for par. They all laughed and told me that nobody actually had par and I won the last skin. Shows what you can do when you relax and just let your body do the work.
We are getting ready to start work on the practice putting green starting as soon as we have a few days in a row that are dry. We have a nice pile of soil and dirt to fill in the low spots and will be extending the green a ways out toward the tee box so that we can create a fun little putting course for evenings after golf and for kids to learn the art of putting. We will also put some new underground sprinklers on timers that will enable us to water very accurately so as to keep the surface wet enough to grow nice grass without it being spongy and also allowing it to dry sufficiently to keep fungus from attacking. We are hoping to have it ready for the little kids to begin to use in late June, or hopefully at least part of it.
Please come join us as spring begins in earnest this coming weekend!!
