COMO Golf Tournement - day 1

I played in the first day of the COMO golf tournement today. The COMO is one of two tournements that I intended to play this year. I got pretty fed up with all the BS surrounding tournements the last few years. The men running the tournements would seldom play the format they advertised. If they did play the format adveritised the would play lots of little games with the hanidcap system that would bias the tournement in favor of the low handicap golfers. Their favorite game was to have the tournement played to only 90% of a players index. As a 26 handicap golfer with a 24.6 index that would give me 22.14 strokes of handicap for the tournement. So I would be giving up 3.86 strokes while a golfer with a 1.7 index and a 2 handicap would be playing to a 1.53 hanidicap for the tournement, a loss of only .47 strokes.

Well I got tired of the unannounced changes in the conditions of play and the handicap games so I swore last year that I wouldn't play in any of the tournements this year except for the COMO and maybe the club championship.

The COMO is a 2 day four man scramble tournement. They blind draw four man teams each day. So I get to play with six different people during the weekend. They usually pay out 7 places each day and closest to the hole prizes on all par threes.

The top 10 teams on the first day get to play in a horse race at the end of the day.

Well my team finished in third today. But not thanks to much that I did. I was really swinging poorly. My putting was pretty good. But everything else sucked.

We were eliminated from the horse race on the second hole. Our C player hit our approach shot on two to just short of the right hand green side bunker. The flag was located just 8 paces over the bunker. So I had to chip over the bunker and stop the ball near the flag without much green to work with.

I told my team that if I try to keep the ball close to the pin there is probably a 90% chance that I will drop the ball into the bunker. So I gave them the choice. Do they want the ball in the bunker or long past the pin. They took long past the pin. I hit the ball well and it landed right near the pin, but then released forward and rolled to the back side of the green.

I was feeling pretty bad that my bad shot had knocked us out of the horserace. But then it occured to me that our C player put me into the position to have to make that shot. Then our A player left the next shot, his putt, 5 feet short of the hole, and our B player missed the putt. Then the B player lost the chip off that we needed to win to continue.

So I guess over all our elimination from the horse race was a team effort.

More golf tomorrow with 3 new team mates. I just hope I can contribute more than a couple long putts and some good reads on the shorter ones.