January 2009
Men's Club News: No event or get-togethers to mention so I will just briefly fill you in on a few things.
MPGA Match Play - for those who do not know what that is, the Minnesota Public Golf Association (MPGA) organizes match play events for its member clubs during the summer. Each member club tries to field its best team to play in match play competition against another men's club. Pebble Creek has participated in this competition for many years. The big change this year is that they are reducing the number of players on each team from 24 to 16. This will help many of us as membership is down and it has been hard to field a strong, competitive team. Also, instead of playing home and away matches against the same club and then having the winner advance in the bracket, this year the format will be that each club will play four matches, two home and two away, and they will play them against a different club each time. The total points earned will be accumulated and the top four teams from each division will then advance to a playoff round. We hope, as does the MPGA, that these changes will generate more interest in the event. If you have never played, it really is a lot of fun and there is some great golf played. Every Pebble Creek member is eligible to participate. Mel Doherty is our team Captain this year. There is also a MPGA Senior Match Play tournament though that is only an 8 man team and you need to be 55 years or older to participate. Those matches are normally played the first Tuesday of each month. I have not seen if the format on that has changed. Mike Doering is the Senior Team Captain.
Pebble Creek is hosting the MPGA Mid-Amateur/Individual Low Net tournament this year! In addition to the match play tournament, the MPGA runs a number of big tournaments during the summer with one each month. The first one in May is the mid-am/low net. This is a great tournament to participate in for all handicap levels as there are net flights for you to enter. With it being at Pebble Creek this year, we hope to see a lot of you out there. Go to www.mpga.net for more details.
Your Board of Directors have been working hard over the winter. The handbook has been completely reviewed and updated. A number of changes have been made and you will hear more about those as we get closer to the golf season. Bill Timmer has graciously volunteered to run the Senior League this year, so that fills out the only open spot we had on the Board. Thanks, Bill!! Warren D. Johnson and Gary Obele will be the Guest Day chairmen and promise to bring you the best Guest Day event ever! They have already been working on the details so we are looking forward to hearing more about it in the coming months. We have a number of new members on the Board this year who are bringing in some fresh ideas and energy, which is exciting to some of us older farts who have been on the board a while. We hope that trend continues as we wouldn't mind "retiring" soon :). So don't beat them up too bad this summer, we are going to need them to keep the Men's Club running in the coming years. With the state of the economy and just normal life changes (people getting older), we have noticed a significant reduction in men's club play over the last few years. We have talked and talked about this and tried to figure out why and what we can do to bring it back up. This year we have changed a lot of the weekend events, throwing out some of the old events and bringing in some new formats. We hope that will help. It would be great to get things back to how it used to be when we always had 40 to 50 members playing in the weekend events and then gathering afterwards for some cocktails and lies about how great we played. Aaaahhhh, those were the days! That was what made our Men's Club so great, in my humble opinion, and I wish it could still be that way so our new, younger members could experience the fun we had. I realize priorities have changed in everyone's lives and am not sure if this is a "generation" thing or if I am just getting too old. But I sure do miss it. Anyway, enough being melancholy, this is supposed to be a cheery letter!
I see this letter is getting pretty long so I will end it. Just a reminder that our Men's Club Open House will be on Saturday, April 4th this year from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM at Pebble Creek. I will send out more reminders each month but mark it on your calendars now.
Talk to you next month,
Mark Staller
Club Secretary