by Bruce Braun
“Sometimes the biggest problem is in your head. You’ve got to believe.” -Jack Nicklaus.
Just before teeing off this morning 60 members and 2 guests gathered on a hilltop, otherwise known as the ninth tee. The elevated location looks south over Upper Black Sturgeon Lake. It is a fitting location to offer some repose as we gathered to pay our respects to former Beauty Bay senior league members that have moved on and have joined another club. We were fortunate to have the talented John Bowiec grace our ears. For those of you who know John, he can be found busking at the Kenora Farmers Market on occasion. It was a beautiful beginning to a beautiful day. There were some great teams and individual scores reported and more than a few laughs and smiles.
Just a couple of notes of clarification for our senior men’s league as these questions have come up recently:
-Long drives must be in the fairway.
-Longest putts must start on the green.
-The highest score you can record on any hole is a nine.
At some level golf is a game of math. I used to be good at math. Not so much anymore. I blame my sloth on technology. When I was a kid, I learned the usual stuff…addition, subtraction, division, and multiplication with pencil and paper. By the time high school came around, I was using a small handheld calculator. Now I use an app. Easier yet, I ask Siri. Hey Siri, what’s $147.16 minus $16.57. She spits out an answer quicker than I can grab my calculator. $130.59. On the golf course I use a Bushnell GPS watch that uses satellite information to give me the front, middle, and back of the green yardages. It’s brilliantly easy, although not always accurate I’m convinced. But then again, neither are my golf shots! Again, when I was a kid, I got pretty good estimating yardages on the golf course. There were always some markers to go by. Either marked irrigation heads, or posts/bushes on the edges of the fairway, or something similar. I learned A2 + B2 = C2. If I was off to the left or right of the fairway, but I could see a marker I could estimate my yardage to the marker squarely and then do the math. I was pretty good at calculating yardage. These days I see a lot of golfers that have a GPS device of some sort. What do you use?
This is from Tom Kozak. Thanks Tom!
So, Jesus, Moses and an elderly looking gentlemen were golfing. Moses steps up and hits a terrible shot that is heading for the pond. Moses gestures with his arms and the water parts. The ball bounces across the bottom of the pond and up onto the green. Jesus says, “Nice shot Moses!” Then Jesus steps up and hits a more terrible shot. It also heads for the pond, but the ball sits on the water’s surface. Jesus walks across the water, takes his stance and hits his ball up onto the green. Moses says, “Nice shot Jesus!” The elderly looking gentleman is taking all this in. He steps up and hits the worst shot of the three of them. The ball goes about 40 yards and then there is a huge gust of wind that pushes the ball all the way into the pond and then sinks to the bottom. Just then a large carp comes up and grabs the ball in its mouth then jumps out high above the waters surface. A passing starling grabs the ball right out of the carps mouth and flies the rest of the way down the fairway and drops the ball onto the green. Then a squirrel comes out of the woods and nudges the ball into the hole for a hole-in-one. Jesus turns to the old man says, “Nice shot dad!”
Results for the league on July 23 are as follows:
Front nine scramble winners were the outstanding team of Paul Warkentin, Nelson Rozon, Dick Green, and Duncan Ross with a -5 score of 30. Congratulations!
Other achievements:
Longest putt on number 11: Russ “From Another Postal Code” Garneys.
Longest drive on number 13: Dick “da Bomb” Green.
Closest to the cup first shot on number 14: Al “I can see the bottom of the cup from here” Pekarchuk.
Longest drive on number 15 (75+): Tom “da Boomer” Kozak.
Closest to the cup on number 17, second shot: Ken “Easy-Peezy” Robertson.
Flight winners:
Flight 1: Bruce Braun, 39.
Flight 2: Nelson Rozon, 38.
Flight 3: Tom Kozak, 42
Flight 4: Rick Wiley, 43.
Flight 5: Paul Vincent, 49.
See you next week!
