Tee Tattler

Spring greetings from the I.V. Country Club Golf Course!
It’s been a few weeks since I wrote the column so the details will be scant but here goes.
A few teams went to the annual Spring Pro AM tournaments at the GP Country Club for three days, followed immediately at the Rogue Valley CC in Medford for another two days. Rex Denham headed up my team of Todd Johan, Jason Gill and Joe Lindgren (Rex’s friend from McKinleyville). D’Lynn headed up Troy Roach, Chaise and Tyler Robbins, and Dan Day’s team. We met up with the All-Hults team of Roger, Freddie, Bill, BJ and Michael, seeing them get first place for several days. Old friends Travis and Crystal came up from McKinleyville as well, Travis winning gross score on several days. I got a skin on the practice round day worth $125. Dan got the lone skin on day 1 worth $1700, and Chaise got one on day 2 of Medford. D’Lynn’s team got in the money several days, so they all came home with a profit. Our team was one putt shy of the money on several days. We were very happy with our scores, especially considering that our pro is 85 years old and gets pars and birdies more than bogies.
We played a Friday evening skins game on the same day as the high school prom and were very happy to see Braeden Lapora and Lauren Tucker dressed to the nines out on the driving range patio enjoying their prom dinner in the sunshiny but cool evening, the lush green driving range and mountains beyond providing the perfect atmosphere for their romantic dinner.
Freddie Hults’ high school team put on a nice 3-person scramble tournament this past Saturday with a fat taco bar hosted by Graham. Todd, Freddie and Daniel won low gross with 12 under par. The kids raised a few dollars for travelling expenses and we all enjoyed an ever-drying course. Thanks to the nice weather, next week should be dry enough to complete mowing everything.
I decided that I wanted to start up the pumps to flush the winter debris from the lines, so that we can water greens. I opened the pumphouse door on the orange pump and found the orange pump was missing. Scott Kern informed me that the city had temporarily removed it for maintenance – what a relief as I had assumed that it had been stolen. So, I got the blue pump going and went around the course, checking sprinkler function and finding new breaks in the outlets. Suddenly the pressure dropped, so I went back to the pump and found that the 20x10x6 foot inlet box has a bunch of seaweed that had invaded it, stopping the water flow. While the water was low in the box, I jumped down into it. I was scooping up seaweed and throwing it up and out of the tank when the pump started to lose its prime. As it pumped slower and slower, the water level began to creep up my shin until it reached midway up my shorts. I reluctantly jumped back out to reprime the pump but, of course, the pump had already sucked up seaweed, clogging the inlet pipe, causing the foot valve to stick open. I’m getting pretty fast at disassembling the foot valve after we have clogged it a couple times a year for the past few years so hopefully will have that fixed so that we are able to
Men’s and Ladies’ league starts this week, Mondays and Wednesdays for Men and Thursdays for Ladies. The leagues are suitable for every skill level with handicapping designed to level the playing field so that any skill level can win, just as long as you play to your ability.
***Next tournament is the Chuck Taylor Scramble held Saturday, May 24.