Happy summer greetings from the Illinois Valley Country Club golf course!
Men’s Club action, top ten (11 ) teams:
- Taylor’s Sausage 208
- Kerby Electric 199
- True Value #2 195.5
- D&B 193.5
- Bud Bros 192
- Pacific Ridgeline 181.5
- Cascade Auto 179
- Valley Fab 169.5
- Selma Secondhand/True Value #1 (tie) 168
- Jerry’s Towing 147
Surprisingly, even with the hot days this week, we have a good number of players out on the course. Todd’s crew of greens mowers did a fabulous job of getting the greens mowed and rolled and boy were they fast on Friday night. We use a little tool invented by a guy with the last name of Stimp, strangely, it’s called a “Stimpmeter”. It consists of two pieces of wood that are screwed together with spacers between, leaving a gap that is just smaller than a golf ball so that the ball can roll on the rails created by the pieces of wood. It is about 24 inches long and has a flat spot on the base of it and a little backward hook on the top. The operator tilts the stick until the flat spot on the base is level with the green’s surface, then holds a ball against the hook and then lets go of the ball and allows it to run the rails to the green’s surface. He rolls three balls and averages the distance that they roll. Then does the same operation but rolling the opposite direction. He averages those three and then averages the two rolls, this is the Stimp score. In the 1978 U.S. Open, the Stimp score of the average green was 8.5 feet. Our Stimp score on Friday night was 9.5, which was unheard of 40 years ago. It is surprising that we can keep up with technology so well with the second-hand equipment that we own, but it sure is nice that other, well-funded golf courses are able to sell us their used stuff for a fraction of its original price, so that we can actually have such fast putting green’s surfaces.
In ladies’ action, they had three teams show up on a very hot evening. Sherry chipped one in for birdie on #9 and delighted her team with the solo birdie for the night. The ladies stayed out in the heat and finished up right before dark. We lamented the fact that we did not plan a glow ball tournament for the hot nights, but weather comes and goes. If we had planned the glow ball, it probably would have been one of those cold evenings with a stiff breeze too!
In skins action Friday night, there was only had six of us—Todd, Colby, Jakob, Graham, Jesse and me. Jesse got first skin on #10 with a par. Todd got KP on #13 and won a skin with par. On the narrow #14, Graham hammered a shot over the trees and over the adjacent fairway and into the rough. He then hit the same shot to come back over the trees and onto the green. Then he made a 15 foot putt for a birdie and a skin. On #16 from about 180 yards, Todd put one on the green for KP and another skin. Jakob says that his claim that night was that he only lost 4 balls!
And finally on Sunday night skins we had a nice group, including Isiah’s Dad, Roach, who had not played with us before. On #2, another fairly newcomer and one of our youngest players—Rowdy got into the winners circle several times but suffered a tie three times. Colby told me that he was not going to play skins that night but went out with Emily in the late afternoon and shot a 37 with 3 birdies, 2 bogies and 4 pars, so he came back out to play skins afterward, good thing he did because he won two skins and a KP. Rowdy and Colby tied with birdies on #2. Poke and Colby tied with birdies on #6. Poke got a skin on #7 with a par. And Colby took the last skin with a huge drive almost all the way to the ditch on #9, followed by a second shot just feet from landing on the green, a decent chip about 12 feet and sunk the birdie putt. Afterward, we all met up with Scottie and Sue at Pappy’s Pub after their family Rogue River Float and they filled the little room up with their huge bunch of family.
**This Saturday is Joel’s birthday tournament—9 holes of scramble followed by 9 holes of horse race.
**Next Saturday is the Swift and Mighty memorial tournament with 9 holes of 4-person scramble.
**The kid’s league is still going so keep the kids coming on Thursdays.