Goooo...Team!

Not the best start..waking up LATE and almost missing the sign-in for my first club tournament..but I made it. After check-in I got a bunch of goodies which included a GREAT fitting (I have a "Hal Sutton" head..hats just fit me bad) Adidas golf hat, Adidas golf towel and a pack of Noodles..which I'm sure I'll give away too.

I was surprised how many players were there. It was a shotgun start and with two four-somes at each hole..equalling 144 players..never seen so many golfers amassed in one location. I found my name on the team roster sheet, for lack of a better word, and I was in on team 17A.

The biggest buzz going on that morning was the $100 buy-in per team or $3600 purse. I thought there would be a few, that were like us, that were not going to buy-in..nope. It was a little humilating when the pro-shop was announcing (loudly, I thought, over the P.A. system) that "The teams that we have NOT received buy-in's yet..team 17A..17A..this is your last chance..Team 17A". I heard various snickers and guffaws..but heck this was my first club event so..oh well

We all got in our carts and then the starter announced over the P.A. system..GO! It looked like a wild golf cart race..kinda' funny I thought..but well directed traffic.

Our "first" hole was the 17th hole, par 3. I was amazed how well trimmed the tee boxes were for today and ALL the tee boxes were officically marked using the SCGA markers. We have four sets of official SCGA tees at our club (red, gold, blue, black). It turned out with my current index, 16.5, I was the "C" player. The "captain" of our team told me that I should tee off from the gold tees today..fine with me. I usually play from the blue tees anyway and with the new irons it just took a little pressure off from the start..or so I thought.

Our "D" player, who said he was a 25 index'er, played from the red tees..he said he plays from the blues..I'm glad he played from the reds. I hit second(our batting order was from the red tee to the tips) and pushed it BADLY right..ugh..not a good start. Everyone else got on and with the 4-man scramble format I was fortunate to pick my "errant" shot and take it back onto the green.

Our "D" player missed the putt for birdie but gave me a great view of the break. It was a quick downhill left to right breaker. I set up..took a nice stroke..good contact..birdie! Everyone was hootin' and hollerin'..wow. We also birdied the 2nd hole also, not me, but we were onto a GREAT start.

I'm not going to break down each hole..that would take forever..like this post already has..but we ended up going (-5) under for the round. We just about had a birdie opportunity on every hole but just a little out of our "index" reach and just made numerous pars.

I didn't have time to eat lunch with the team because something came up, wife called, so I high tailed it out of there. I was surpirsed for a scramble format how long the round took (5 hours) but we all were really taking time reading the putts.

Anyway, overall, I had a GREAT time and enjoyed the cameraderie throughout the round. We had great guys and our "A" and "B" players were fanatastic. No attitude and very endearing to the team..good bunch of guys..kudos to all.