Happy post Labor Day from the Illinois Valley Country Club, hope everyone had a nice time at the festival and parade.
Speaking of the parade, we had only five cart drivers this year volunteer to be in the parade—Joel and Melissa Dierkes brought Melissa’s brand new shiny black cart with Sloane and Stella, Tracy brought her new-to-her road legal cart, Randy P drove one of the new carts as did Dustin Henderson and toddler Hudson in the car seat and I drove the old ball-getter cart. We got mobbed by all the little (and not so little) kids who were trying to get as much of the jerky we were handing out from Taylor’s Sausage. Great parade and thank-you for all the Lions Club, Sheriff’s Dept and Jim Frick for giving us a nice shout out.
In Men’s League, we have whittled the field down to Cascade Auto and Taylor’s Sausage who will battle it out on Wednesday for first place. Me and Todd will play against Bruce and Danielle (their kid, Jonathan is coaching the high school football team that night) and Danny and Dustin will play against Reggie and Don.
I was sitting on the patio at Pappy T’s Pub and Post Office Gary Nolroth and Joyce were sitting there having a margarita in honor of the passing of Jimmy Buffett and I asked Joyce how her little Tuesday Ladies’ group had been doing, hoping for some stories of birdies or at least pars. Joyce offered up that Bertha Miller is striking the ball really well and that she wore short shorts last week, I mentioned that I would put that in the column and so here it is. Bertha is in such great physical condition and is really hitting some nice shots, plus, she walks instead of driving a cart. Joyce mentioned that she herself always wears sensible long legged pants hee hee.
The Thursday night ladies have been coming on in force still this fall and I think I saw 4 groups out there this week. I am hoping that we can get one more all-ladies team for the Calcutta and have been pestering Tracy to talk two more girls to join her and her friend Chris from Central Point.
The skins guys were out in full force this week as the weather has just been marvelous and the fairways have completely recovered from the hot summer days and are so lush and green. Notables this week- Wednesday had skins won by Todd with a couple lone birdies and Colby won one with a par on #7. On Friday night we had 14 guys playing for $10 skins, trying to get done before the rain started, well, we didn’t. It started to lightly sprinkle on #1 and Jim Losey remarked that it would stop by the time we reached the green, of course it started dumping by then. Nobody brought rainy gear as it was so warm. By the time we reached #2 green, two guys had left. By the 3rd green, two more abandoned us and as we were leaving #4 green, three more were chased off by the now driving rain, leaving just Dustin, Todd, me, Ty and Jason (he walks and has a huge umbrella so he was not very wet at all). Bless little Hudson in the car seat who was getting dripped on pretty well, he didn’t fuss a bit. The last hole had a puddle all around the cup and we all had fun seeing how hard we had to hit to sink a putt through all the water.
And on Monday night we had 14 guys again with Rhino, Woody and James coming directly from the beer garden to the golf course-we didn’t see too many great shots out of those guys. Victoria and some of her friends also came along with Rhino and they were so amazed at how fun the skins guys have out there. Lost Camp Megan came along with Danny and she had a great time too. I finally got a chance at a skin on #8 with a nice long putt and it looked good for me to win about $70 but Todd chipped in from about 40 feet, tying my birdie and stealing my skin. James actually rallied on the last hole and made a birdie so he and Todd split the cash.
**Remember that Calcutta is this Friday night and Saturday so come on down and join in or at least have a cocktail and watch the teams in combat for the big cash prizes.
And remember, kids 17 and under always play for free at IVCC.
