First place winners, left to right: Mike Adkins, Bob Sinclair, Wayne Tripp, Rob Krebs, Russ Loewenstein, and Joe Duch. Not pictured: Rene Lefebvre and Bjarne Kaer.
Erv Stein
The seasonal closing in October of our Eagle’s Nest and Tuscany East Golf Courses for annual reseeding operations resulted in the scheduling of three off-premises events in October. On Nov. 7, we conducted our PebbleCreek Men’s Nine-Hole Golf Association (PCM9GA) annual Gary Lord Veterans Day Memorial Tournament at our Tuscany West Pebble Creek Golf Course, the first afternoon event marking the return of our on-premises events. Our PCM9GA group is among the four PebbleCreek sanctioned golf clubs, and since our humble founding in 2005, has expanded by leaps and bounds to our current role of 404 PCM9GA golfers. While our PCM9GA group adheres to all Arizona Golf Association (AGA) official golf practices, it has consistently been a low-key fun-loving group and as a result, significant camaraderie among members has led to developing very close friendships. That being said, Gary Lord for a number of years, as a West Point graduate and retired Army Colonel, contributed substantially to the growth of our PCM9GA, was well respected by all our members, and for a few years now, we have conducted annual golf events to honor the memory of Gary.
Returning to our fall through early spring afternoon tee times, 120 golfers teed off on an unusually windy afternoon utilizing both the front and back nine of our Tuscany West Course in the most commonly deployed Scramble format. The Scramble format scoring is based upon utilizing the best shot of the four team members starting from the initial drive to the final putting stroke. The windy conditions never let up for the entire event, which affected and hampered the accuracy of many golfers, particularly for putting since the variability of Tuscany West greens were further amplified by the intense gusty wind. In spite of the environmental interference, quite miraculously, many foursomes attained incredibly good team scores to the extent that the net scores for the 10 winning foursomes, 5 foursome groups in the front nine and back nine flights, ranged from a low of net 56, 16 under par to a net 64, 8 under par.
Kudos to the winning foursomes as follows for achieving quite phenomenal net scores under quite adverse environmental conditions as follows:
Gary Lord Memorial Tournament Winning Teams
Front Nine Flight
1st Place: Rene Lefebvre, Mike Adkins, Joe Duch, Rob Krebs, 16 under par, total gross 56
2nd Place: Greg Santora, Ron Froemming, Lennie Leibowitz, Dave Wattenberg, 16 under par, total gross 56
Back Nine Flight
1st Place: Russ Loewenstein, Bjarne Kaer, Wayne Tripp, Bob Sinclair, 14 under par, total gross 58
2nd Place: Eric Letzler, Randy Prinz, Randy McConaughey, Loren Norgaard, 13 under par, total gross 59
Remaining events scheduled for this current year include our Holiday Luncheon Tournament on Dec. 2 and our CHA-CHA-CHA Tournament on Dec. 5. We highly encourage prospective PCM9GA members to contact our membership chairman, Jim Pisarski, at 949-485-0594 or Tim Munson at 503-460-7618.