The Board of Directors for the MGA met this past Thursday to discuss current business and potential projects. I thought it might be good to share the results of that meeting in an effort to keep the membership informed. I won’t bore you with the complete details of our meeting so I have listed the bullet points below. You will see some changes to how we play our weekly matches.
- This was first meeting since Hal Baker resigned. Marvin Jones was appointed to replace Hal until his term expires at the end of this calendar year. Hopefully Marvin will be willing to continue on the BOD next year.
- Recently the golf course has added some granite boulders along the cart paths in some areas to fight erosion. The BOD made the decision to consider those rocks as part of the cart path and the player shall be entitled to a free drop should the rocks restrict either stance or swing.
- Changes to the Saturday Points game (effective June 1):
- The BOD made the decision to discontinue the 3rd Saturday format of 2 man teams (points). Primarily reasoning was that when we have an odd number of players, we either have to leave someone out or use a blind draw for the odd player’s partner. This just did not seem fair since the blind draw player would have 2 chances of winning and it is possible that he could cause his chosen partner to finish lower in the standings.
- Since we made the decision to do away with the 2 man teams, in the future we will now play a Shamble on the 3rd Saturday each month.
- Given that we want to vary the format on Saturday and we made the 3rd Sat a Shamble every month, we will now play a Scramble on the 5th Saturday in the months where there are 5 Saturdays.
- The 4th Saturday will be changed to Individual Points only. We will no longer have a blind draw for one place team . This will allow more money to be distributed to more individuals that play well.
- Based on comments from some members it was decided to make a change that affects picking order when we have a 3-some. Some have felt it not fair to penalize the team with only 3 players by also having them pick last. Going forward, when there are 3 man teams, the order of picking will be to have the captains of the 3 man team pick prior to the captain of a 4 man team. The plan is to monitor this change and see what affect (good or bad) on the results. The BOD will review this change after 60 days to see the effect on the results. The goal here is to try and make team selection as fair as possible. We also discussed the option of the “picking order” be based on avg score with the highest avg score of the team captain on any given day would get first pick. This item did not pass and was tabled for discussion later.
- For some time now we have determined who the team captains were on any given day using the avg score. The original formula we used was the avg of the last 20 scores. The BOD agreed that this does not give a current enough result as some scores used in the formula are over a year old. Given that the new World Handicap recently changed to use fewer scores to calculate handicap, the BOD made the decision to begin on June 1 using the avg of the last 10 scores. We feel that this will give a more accurate picture of who is playing well.
- Other items we discussed but no decision made include:
- new date for the Annual 2-Man Best Ball tournament (new date should be announced soon)
- Plans are under way for our Fall Trip but no destination has been decided yet. One thing we did decide on due to the increase of available funds is to credit those making the trip this year with $3 per time played up to a maximum of $200. Last year it was $2 with a $150 max. We should have site selected and start collecting deposits in the next month or so.
- We still need to get a concrete pad poured for the Memorial Bench we purchased earlier this year.
- We discussed the possibility of the MGA creating a project where-by a walk bridge to go on the right side of hole #1. This would make it easier for those that lay up to cross over without having to return to the cart path. It will NOT be wide enough to accommodate a cart. This of course requires agreement with the golf course management.
- On a final note, W J and I are in the process of documenting the rules that govern our weekly matches and events. When complete I will post it as a menu item on our website. The hope is that by doing this everyone will be able to quickly find the rules we play by.