December 5, 2011

TODAY'S ACTION

Queen's Harbour Yacht & Country Club was a great setting for our 2012 season opener. Hopes were high as we gathered in the cart staging area for announcements by Barney Poston and Mike Witek (below, l-r), our tournament chairman and the club's PGA assistant professional, respectively. Due to a last-minute change on the golf shop's staff, the home team co-captains, Bill Bremner and Ray Mantle, needed to put in extra hours beforehand to ensure the course was ready  for another well-executed event. Time well spent!

Queen's Harbour ranges from 2-40 feet above sea level and the course length is 6,002 yards. Those facts hadn't changed since our last time here in July 2010. However, its course rating was reduced from 69.1 to 67.9. The 1.2-stroke difference affects your handicap but did anyone really think his score would improve by one stroke?

We hoped to finish our work in far less time than the 10h 17m of available daylight and thought weather conditions favored a low-scoring event. There was no wind at the shotgun; it rose steadily toward 15 mph by noon. The temperature ranged from 65-77 degrees. We played under scattered-cloud or mostly cloudy conditions, mainly of the Stratocumulus translucidus variety at altitudes of 3,200-6,000 feet. Two or three holes before the end of the round, we were delighted to spot a waxing gibbous moon (79 percent illuminated) rising through the cloud cover, five days before the next full moon.

The average handicap index in today's field was 15.1; last time here, the average was 16.2. One expects a one-stroke and one-point performance improvement over the July 2010 event. Today's field took 3.3 more strokes and tallied 4.0 less points than the earlier field. Post-round analysis was further confounded by the net differential of 6.7 strokes between the average golfer's score and his handicap.

In July 2010, we played with uniform temperatures of 80-84°F under mostly clear skies with 10-22 mph gusts and slight, isolated sprinkles. We made 68 birdies then, 41 birdies today; we picked up 83 times then, 155 times today. Let me know if you figure out how a better qualified field scored worse. On the other hand, everyone knows golf is utterly unpredictable.

In any case, today's outcome established a baseline: Hidden Hills has an early lead in the 2012 Brady Cup race and Queen's Harbour leveraged its home-team advantage into a share of second place with the 2011 runner-up, World Golf Village. With 11 matches left—the Brady Cup counts double—the top-to-bottom spread leaves a lot of room to jockey for position.

Bill Bremner caught the spirit of the day: "…the course was in very good shape, the lunch was very good, the beer was free, and the weather was terrific. How each of us plays on any given day is what makes golf the humbling sport it is."

THE SHAKY LADDER

Today's field averaged 29.6 points, which is four points less than the 2011 season average. The following table shows today's results: concerning the bottom two teams, San Jose was short two players while Marsh Creek was unable to participate.

Here's how the top five teams fared, separated by second and fourth place tiebreakers:

Hidden Hills Country Club

With 236 points, Captains Mark Morrison's team jumped to an early lead on the season. Fred Whatley provided the firepower with 38 points and the support cast included Mark Morrison and Barney Poston with a respectable 36 points apiece.

Queen's Harbour Yacht & Country Club

Enjoying the home team advantage, co-Captains Bill Bremner and Ray Mantle's team posted 224 points for a second-place tie with World Golf Village. Under Rule 7-2, the six highest point totals for each team were used to break the tie. Queen's Harbour edge was two points, 199 over 197. Bob Garces and Fred Kastner led the way with 38 points each while Bill Bremner added 35.

World Golf Village

Tallying 224 points, Captain Jock Ochiltree's team shared second-place honors but had to settle for third-place money via our monthly tie-breaker rule. Gary Scheidemantle was the team's top gun with 40 points and led the entire field in both scoring modes, strokes and points. Joe Daloia was on his heels with a sparkling 39 points.

Deercreek Country Club

At 223 points, Captain Dave Noble's team claimed fourth-place money in a three-point tiebreaker over Osprey Cove, 198 to 195. Mark Good chalked up 36 points, Terry Otterman added 35 points, and three other team members scored better than the average in today's field, 29.6 points.

Osprey Cove Golf Club

With 223 points, Captain Jack Hoey's team shared fourth-place scoring honors but had to settle for the short end of a tiebreaker with Deercreek. Jim Hill and Jon Peterson held sway with 36 points each while two teammates beat the field average as well.

LEADERBOARD

Birdies:    3   Rick Jacobs EH
                        Gary Scheidemantle WG
                   2   Bob Dale SG, Don Dopp MP
                        Rich Galloway EH, Bob Garces QH
                        Greg Howard EH, Bill Stewart SJ
                   7   Made on hole 12

Strokes: 74   Gary Scheidemantle WG at 5:1 odds
                 77   Rick Jacobs EH at 2:1 odds
                 94   MSIS Average (2011 average: 91.5)

Points:   40   Gary Scheidemantle WG at 5:1 odds
                 39   Joe Daloia WG at 3:1 odds
                        Charlie Jackson SJ at 3:1 odds
                 30   MSIS Average (2011 average: 33.7)

CLOSEST TO FLAGSTICK

Hole 3:      Don Dopp MP              5' 0"
Hole 7:      Bob Garces QH           4' 5½"
Hole 13:    Russ Sell JG                8' 1"
Hole 15:    Tex Blinn HH               8' 5-5/8"

DIFFICULTY RELATIVE TO PAR

155 pickups were recorded in today's round. Hole 13 offers a pleasing view of the Intracoastal Waterway and the Wonderwood Bridge but that pleasure was offset with the pain of 17 pickups and was rated as today's most difficult hole. Hole 17 claimed another 21 pickups while holes 4 and 5 were a one-two punch at 15 pickups apiece.

In match play, you expect to get strokes on holes where you most need them but those are not necessarily the most difficult holes. Today's hole-by-hole allocations were not well correlated with their degree of difficulty, measuring 0.12 on the Kendall tau scale. At 0.71, Sawgrass is the most correlated layout on the MSIS rotation whereas Orange Park is least correlated at 0.0, that is, its hole-by-hole ranking is entirely independent of its difficulty in Stableford play.

Pickups: 21 on hole 17; 17 on hole 13.

Pickups: 15 on hole 5; 11 on hole 2.

Pickups: 8 on hole 12; 7 on hole 3.

NEXT VENUE

When:    9:00 a.m., Monday, January 23
Where:   Magnolia Point Golf & Country Club
                 Designed by Mark McCumber (mid 1980s)
                 White/Blue Course: 6,013 yards, 69.1/124
Who:       Josh Anderson, PGA, Head Professional
                 Bob Wildner, Team Representative and
                 recovering post-surgery for yet a while

SCORING AREA

Once again, your scorecards were handled by a volunteer crew of your fellow-competitors without a single data-entry error! The following list is given in the order that your card is handled from the time it is deposited in the box on the scorer's table until it is delivered up for postgame audit.

Readers:  Steve Woodford QH, Dick Lawson QH
Scorers:   Ralph Belter HH, Allen Witham HH
Tally:         Jack Garrity EH
Runners:  Glenn Dobrick SG, Barney Poston HH
Board:       Brian Rogers, PGA, Head Professional
Sorter:       Bill Bremner QH
Reserve:   Jim Brady QH, Bob Kastner QH

ELECTRONIC SCOREBOARD

Several ideas are being considered that may help to shorten the time spent at an MSIS event. To some extent, the time it takes to play an MSIS round is irreducible by dint of the laws governing traffic situations such as assembly lines, highway and telecom networks, and other queues. You can expect a 120-man shotgun format will be played in no less than four hour, 35 minutes. Ever notice how rubbernecking on the highway causes serious congestion? Just so, some golfer's habits slow play and add as much as an hour to a shotgun round. Our team representatives are getting ready to tackle on-course issues with our pace of play.

Meanwhile, we're also working on the pace of work in our after-round scoring operation. At Queen's Harbour, we tested the idea of using an electronic scoreboard to cut as much as 15-20 minutes from the time it takes to deliver the day's results. Thanks to Tony Demarco OC for believing in the feasibility of an electronic scoreboard.

The main idea is that data from the scoring-area PCs can be posted instantaneously on the electronic scoreboard rather than manually on a physical scoreboard located some distance from the scorers' table. As illustrated (scaled way down from a 55"-65" HDTV display), individual scores appear in the team panels arranged alphabetically to each side of the middle panels. Each team's scoring leader is highlighted in red. The middle panels consist of team standings at the top and leading scorers at the bottom. Team standings will fluctuate as new scores are posted to the board which operates like an election-day display: the expected standings are projected on the basis of past performance until all scorecards are posted and the board is frozen. Let us know what you think.

MSIS FACTOIDS

Pickup Data

The following table shows how pickups varied over the course of eleven events during the past year. Factors affecting the pickup rate include course difficulty and team composition. For example, 48.4% of Jacksonville's rounds in 2010 were posted by A players while 46.9% of Queen's Harbour's rounds were posted by E players. What other factors affect the pickup rate?

Windburn

Today was mostly cloudy with the wind up to 15 mph and gusts to 23 mph. A perfect day to prove my claim, "I don't need greasy-kid sunblock lotion: it clogs my pores and causes festering pustules and worse. It's the wind that gets my sensitive skin." At the end of this cloudy day at Queen's Harbour, my face was indeed reddened by windburn, especially my nose.

Fact is, it's not likely that wind by itself will injure human skin so windburn is really sunburn. My delusion is caused by the fact that while I'm covered with perspiration on a windless day, I hardly sunburn because my sweat filters out the burning actinic rays of the sun. However, a strong wind evaporates sweat and exposes my sensitive skin to unfiltered sunlight which causes the sunburn I claim as windburn.

MSIS HANDICAPS

One of our players, let's call him Chuck Wagon, recently asked Barney, our Handicap Chairman, how the MSIS handicap indexes posted here were calculated. Chuck knew his index was based on the best three of his most recent six scores, but his scoring record did not have an asterisk beside one of his three best scores.

What Chuck didn't know is that his handicap index is actually based on the best three of his most recent six handicap differentials which are computed from four elements: his adjusted gross score, the USGA course and slope ratings, and 113 which is the slope rating of a course of standard difficulty.

Chuck's scoring record (above) has asterisks beside those scores which correspond to his best handicap differentials. For an explanation of the process, please consult this article on the MSIS website. Here are the detailed calculations carried out in our computerized scorekeeping application.

FINANCIAL NEWS

There has been no change to our financial status since the last newsletter was published.

ARTICLES SOLICITED

Come on! Submit an idea or material for an article that might interest your fellow-competitors. Surely you've seen or heard something interesting during an MSIS outing. Stories about things that happened on the course are a staple. Everyone loves a chuckle although a groan is sometimes more instructive.

Your story needn't be the absolute truth! Why not brag about a tricky hole or a great shot? Stretch the facts or share the pain?

Also, please feel free to submit an opinion or suggestion for improving MSIS events. Whatever you submit needn't be related to golf. All we need is a rough draft or a slim outline.

Jack Garrity (aka Mr. Smooth)