PCM9GA conducts Off Campus Coldwater tournament

All Winners – PCM9GA Coyote Lakes Tournament, back row, left to right: Bob Spano, Ed Force, Don Burrows, Greg Edwards, Jay Ward, Connie Neeley; front row: Ted McGovern, Clay Troxell, Randy Prinz, Randy James, Pete Pederson, Gary Lord, Paul Parker

All Winners – PCM9GA Coyote Lakes Tournament, back row, left to right: Bob Spano, Ed Force, Don Burrows, Greg Edwards, Jay Ward, Connie Neeley; front row: Ted McGovern, Clay Troxell, Randy Prinz, Randy James, Pete Pederson, Gary Lord, Paul Parker

Erv Stein

Our PCM9GA completed our third of three off-campus tournament events at Coldwater Golf Club in Avondale, Arizona on a cloudy November 3 morning. Coldwater, while rated in the range of our five Pebble Creek nine-hole courses, is reasonably forgiving with mostly accessible and open rough areas with a minimum of heavy vegetation on the sidelines. That being said, while fewer balls are lost in the rough, Coldwater quite uniquely has significant deep trenches on many of the holes covered with light sand and fine gravel. As a result far more often than not landing in a trench can take an extra one or two strokes to again be on the fairway and will raise havoc with your score. At Coldwater, the PAR 5 hole 11 is not only long with a major dog-leg to the left at about 175 yards out, but the heavy sand in the continuous trench on the left is often a real score killer. In addition, some unusual excitement occurred since the rangers at Coldwater interrupted play after the first hour for about 30 minutes due to several lightning strikes directly on the course.

A standard Scramble format was deployed with each team member required to have at least three of their initial drives used for scoring purposes.

Our hats off to the winning foursome comprised of Josh Rabinowitz, Tim Mohler, Gary Ruehl and Bob McAllister which came in with a super impressive net 64. Kudos to the winners as follows including Mike D’Onofrio who won two of the Closest to the Pin Awards:

Rank Net Team Score Team Members

1 64 Tim Mohler, Gary Reuhl, Josh Rabinowitz, Bob McAllister

2 66 Jeff Furina, Monte Page, Greg McKenzie

3 67 Rick Goodwin, Bill Harrell, John Craven

Closest to the Pin

Mike D’Onofrio – Hole 5 and Hole 14, Jim Martin- Hole 8, Gary Draus – Hole 16

We all gathered and socialized after the event for lunch together at Coldwater Clubhouse Restaurant and the winners were announced and congratulated.

The annual PebbleCreek Golf Course reseeding is now completed and our regular weekly golfing event resumed on November 10 at PebbleCreek with high participation due to the return of our snowbird members. Our semi-annual Membership Meeting was held on November 16 and our always highly anticipated PCM9GA Holiday Party will be held on December 9.

Our current membership role is about 350 members and we highly urge new interested members to join our truly outstanding fun-loving group which welcomes golfers at all skill levels. The $50 annual cost includes dues for the AGA membership which is essential for handicap reporting. From October 1 through the end of December, new members may join for the same $50 membership fee with the added advantage of having their membership dues covered through the remainder of 2016 as well as all of year 2017. Please visit the PebbleCreek PCM9GA website at www.PCM9GA.org or you may contact our current PCM9GA Membership Chairman Bruce Hulbert at 623-535-8761.