Hello from the Illinois Valley Country Club!
In this week’s action, Mens League has finished and now we are playing mini tournaments Mondays and Wednesdays. This week we had 16 people show up on Wednesday and we put together a 2-man best ball. This format sounds like what we call “scramble,” in which each team chooses the best shot on each shot and abandons everything else, then everyone plays from the best shot each shot until the ball is holed. In the best ball, each player plays his own ball all the way until it is holed and then the best score on that hole is chosen for that team. We also allow full handicaps. As you can imagine, the scores can be pretty good for a 2-person team as the chance of having one of the team members get a low score is good. Winners were Casey and newcomer Charlie with something like 3 under par. Then there was a three-way tie for second, with Ty and Troy, Terry and Sue and Jason and Scotty winning $3 over entry fee. We also had honey pots of KP and long drive with Charlie winning 2 KPs and a long drive, Todd with a KP, Colby KP and I actually got a KP too! This was so fun that we will be continuing various mini tourneys during the fall.
In Lady’s Thursday evening, we had two teams show up that included Emily, Kasey, Dani and Mary vs Amy, Natasha, Sue and Sharyl. Emily’s team had birdies on holes #1 and #8, two bogeys and the rest pars to finish at even par 36. Amy reports that she hit all the way past the trees in the middle of #1 fairway and then hit all the way to the green on her second shot. Her team scored 47 for 9 holes. This is incredible because in the spring they were hitting maybe 55 for 9 holes so this Ladies’ League has really improved over the summer. Afterward, a few of the ladies went to Pappy’s and they met a very fancy lady, dressed in Louis Vuitton. She claimed that she had been awaiting a place in which she could get dressed up and she ordered a new cocktail made from melon liqueur, Chambord, sweet/sour and Jaeger floated on the surface—I won’t tell you what the name is because the FCC will fine the I.V. News.
On Friday there was a very large group of folks playing Friday family and friends skins. The evening was very pleasant but the smoke settled in and chased them all home as soon as they finished. I picked up Grey and Ashton and brought them out to see their cousins who have just moved back to Oregon so they didn’t miss golfing too much that night.
On Sunday, a bunch of guys traveled over to Dutcher Creek for a nice fundraiser tournament. D’Lynns team shot an amazing 51 for 18 holes, this is 21 under par! I believe that they had five or more Eagles, which is 2 under par, so basically a 300-yard drive and then chip-in from at least 30 yards—and done five times in one day!
**Coming up—IVCC Championship tournament Sept. 30 and Oct. 1. Full 36 holes of golf to choose our best golfers for 2023. (There is also a net champ for guys like me who are not so talented!)
