“Even God can’t hit a one iron.” -Lee Trevino.
The quote above is prompted by recent thunderstorms. The 1 iron has a short history. You’d be hard-pressed to find one in someone’s golf bag today but in the early 70s it was touted as a wind-piercing, fairway-finder. The 1 iron, or driving iron, is the lowest lofted and longest iron (14 or 16 degrees of loft), although Wilson did make a 0 iron for John Daly. Often called a ‘butter knife’ because of how it looks, the 1 iron has the least surface area on its face and so is commonly regarded as the most difficult club in the bag to hit. Today, the driving iron is virtually obsolete. Lee Trevino is famously quoted, after he had been struck by lightning at the 1975 Western Open, that if he were out on the course and it began to storm again he would take out his 1 iron and point it to the sky, "because even God can't hit a 1 iron." Today, 64 members teed it up. As a senior men’s league we have, thus far, avoided a stormy Tuesday. Today was close as there were clouds all around but only a few raindrops. We have really had a stretch of terrific weather on each of our outings. I recently quizzed A.J. Girardin who is the man in charge of our weekly pairings. In years past former individuals in this role painstakingly put the groups together based on their individual handicaps in an effort to have each team add up to a similar total. A.J. has taken ‘some’ of the pain away by computerizing this process. Thanks A.J. Here’s his explanation… “I have written a program using Microsoft Excel that randomly generates the foursomes each week. It basically works like this: 1. I check off the members that have signed up for that week. 2. I run the program and foursomes are randomly generated with each foursome having a mix of players from flights 1 thru 5. Because we have a very uneven amount of players in each flight, it makes things a bit tricky, but there will never be more than 1 player from flight 1 or flight 5 on a team. 3. I then manually fine-tune things (ie: move players around) to make sure that: 1. Guests play with their sponsoring member. 2. The total handicap for each foursome is within 10 of the average foursome total. 3. There is a maximum of 1 forward tee player in a foursome. I have received feedback from a couple members about playing with the same member in back to back weeks. This is just coincidental, because the initial groupings (before my fine-tuning above) are completely random. I do not check for who played with who in previous weeks, because it has to be done manually and would take hours.” A.J. addressed the throngs of golfers this morning and offered his explanation. He added that you can mention to him if you have been paired with the same golfer multiple times and he will make a note to be sure that it won’t happen the following week. So let them know. It’s all about the fine-tuning! And this, submitted by Marvin Koski, whose playing partner was Bill Devins: “Bill Devin’s scores not in fairways in regulation, but roads in regulation, hitting 10 out of the 18 roads/cart paths in reg. I might add that on a couple of instances a substantial number of yards were gained by this method, although the golf ball paid the price with a fair amount of road rash.” That might be a record, Bill!
The flight breakdowns are: Flight 1 1-14 handicaps Flight 2 15-19 handicaps Flight 3 20-24 handicaps Flight 4 25-29 handicaps Flight 5 30 + handicaps Results for the league on June 27 is as follows:
Front back nine scramble winners were Lee Belanger, Rick Wiley, Gary Hall, and Randy Taylor with a -3 score of 32. Congratulations!
Other achievements: Closest to the cup on number 2: Dave “I Own This Game” Schott. Closest to the cup second shot on number 4: John “Almighty” Zilinski. Longest putt on number 5: Dave “I Need a Bigger Wallet” Schott. Closest to the cup on number 7: Doug “Wowzer” Porlier. Longest putt on number 8: Duncan “From Another Planet” Ross.
June 27 front nine flight winners: Flight 1: John Zilinski, 41. Flight 2: Lee Belanger, 43. Won on a count back. Flight 3: Larrie Davies, 43. Flight 4: Al Jackson, 43. Flight 5: Gary Gerbrandt, 52.
(Submitted by Bruce Braun)
