Tee Tattler

Hello from the Illinois Valley Country Club golf course!
So I missed my deadline last week while awaiting the Men’s Club standings so this week has a little extra stuff.
The Queens of the Greens had 16 ladies show up. They had little purple bags of tee prizes, a huge potluck lunch, and mimosas to start off and somehow managed to squeeze in 9 holes of golf. Winners were “the Jamies” team of Jamie Drake, Jaime Scroggins, Danielle Reese and Sherry Hult. Second place was Megan and Emily Taoramino, Kaelyn Manguchei, Kristi Barnes and third was Emily Nichols, Kacy Griffin, Sue Kern, Melissa Becker. Then, rounding out the tournament was Amy Nolan, Natasha Newman and Melyndee Nolan. Long Drives were Emily and Jamie S and KPs were Jaime S again and Amy. A few of the girls went back out and played another 9, sure nice to see such enthusiasm from the ladies. I was sad to see Megan T leave with disappointment on her face, as her team is not only defending champion but they tied with the first place team. However, due to some of the players already having left the course, they could not play to sudden death, so Eugene did a card playoff which entails using the first hardest hole score, if it is still a tie, you go to the second hardest hole score. They finally got to the third hardest hole and the Jamies won that hole, disappointing the defending champs.
In men’s club action, it looked like everyone showed up on these wonderfully delightful spring evenings, so mild and comfortably warm, kind of wish summer would stay just like this. We still are missing a few handicaps, so I will have the leaderboard next week. (That’s now this week and still no leaderboard.)
The ladies’ club had a nice turnout as well with four or five foursomes out playing scramble. Beth and Nora have joined back up after both being absent for a number of years. Oh, the nostalgia for us old-timers, remembering the fellowship of many golfers and wonderful people over the past 40 years.
A few of us guys stuck ourselves in between some of the ladies’ groups and had a birthday skins game for Graham. Hope we didn’t pester the girls too much. Graham got a birdie on #11 for his birthday birdie, D’Lynn got three skins with a par on #12, chip-in birdie on #17 and his birdie on #18 started with a monster 300+ yard drive over the ditch and next to the big pine, on the green with his second shot and just barely missed his eagle putt for a tap-in birdie and collected about $50 for his skins. Trey, visiting from Florida and a real humorous guy, sunk a 60 foot putt on #16 for a skin and Poke endured D’Lynn’s wisecracking from the side of the green, sinking a 60-footer for a birdie on #15.
And on Friday we had 18 people show up, including “coach” Fred Hults and Dustin Henderson, who had been absent nearly all winter. He saw our cars out front and skidded into the parking lot and joined us. We also had Grey and Ash and Odie, Graham’s sweet horse-dog.
Notables on Friday: nearly everyone lost a ball on #3, both sides of the rough, weeds and the woods, we had it all covered. I was the only shot on #4 green, I had about 14 feet to make two putts to “validate” the KP. I decided to just step up and hit hard to plow through the shaggy green. The ball traced a snaky path, hit the pin hard and dropped for a birdie, the skin and a KP. I put $67 in my pocket to help pay back the thousands that I lost over the winter. D’Lynn had three birdies in a row and collected two skins for $100 and the fourth shot KP on #9, after tying Todd’s chip-in birdie on #8 with an accurate putt from about 8 feet. Todd and Fred both birdied #9 with Fred putting a shot very close and Todd sinking a 20 foot putt, just like the polished player he is.
OK, that was all from my last column.
On Saturday, the Chuck Taylor’s birthday tournament had eight teams play. Chuck had whooped it up a bit much the day before with a ride in the golf cart and entertaining all of us late into the evening, so he did not come out onto the course, but Grandma came out to see the course with Chuck’s sister Bea and cousin Rod, from Arizona. Dawn and Haleigh came down from Tigard and played and also took some of the cousins to Pappy T’s afterward to watch the Preakness. Tie for first place-Todd, Thom, Rich, Jesse with Troy, Roger, Graham, Danny. Tie for third- Terry, John, Taylor, Tracy with Rod, Troy, Aahron, Cam. Fifth was David, Josh, Huey, Jeffry and sixth was Emily, Colby, Mali, Haleigh and Scott, Scottie, Sue, Jayden and Kevin, Jutt, Mark and Eugene supporting the field. Long drive was David, KPs were won by Terry, Emily, Todd and Roger.
After the Saturday tournament, a nice group went out for skins. Todd had us all play for $20 bets so there was about $180 in the pot. John got 2 skins for about $120 and Dave Scott won the other skin. The rest of us went home licking our wounds.
And on Sunday evening, I went out to fix a sprinkler that was not coming up on the #8 teebox. I searched and searched and could not find it, so I went home and got my big weedeater that has a blackberry vine blade on it. I ran it all over that side and still could not find the sprinkler. Then I went through my phone pictures and found where I taken pictures of all of the sets on that hole and found the picture of the teebox, still could not find the sprinkler. Then I tried out my old compass metal detector, still nothing. I finally ran the weedeater blade into the ground until I had the entire side of the teebox down to dirt and then took the big metal rake and finally located it. I gave it a few spins and it finally popped up. I then did a little weedeating around the pump house and of course hit the water line that comes from the well on the driving range, breaking it completely through. I found a repair kit in the bone yard at the old maintenance shack and made a temporary repair. Always something at the golf course, I tell ya.