First Place teams, White and Red Flights, left to right: Mike Branham, Mike Adkins, John Mazzukelly, Joe Oliver, Jerry Shapiro, Bill Wagner, Frank Chop, and Steve Schwartz
Erv Stein
Our first June tournament event of the year was held starting at 7:30 a.m. on June 6 with a surprisingly comfortable temperature of 82 degrees with a light breeze and some cloud cover. We utilized the Back Nine Tuscany West Course.
We had an almost full house total of 71 PebbleCreek Men’s Nine-Hole Golf Association (PCM9GA) enthusiastic golfers, excellent participation considering the large number of departed snowbird members. The Scramble format had team scoring based upon the best drive or pitch or putt for each hole. The 18 foursome teams were divided into two flights, the White Tee Flight consisting of the lower AGA handicapped golfers and the Red Tee Flight comprising the higher handicapper golfers. To ensure a truly fair playing field for all teams, the team result for each foursome received net adjustments based upon the prevailing team cumulative handicaps with the higher handicapped teams receiving more adjustments as indicated. Also, for the initial best drives for each team, each White Tee member required two of their drives to be utilized while the Red Tee team member required at least one of their drives to be utilized. While the requirement for using only one or two drives for each team member often gives some comfort to those who experienced some shanked, hooked, or otherwise disastrous funky drives, particularly on a so called off day, the high pressure then surely existed for some team members when their last drive had to be used to fulfill the requirement for using one or two of their drives and often made the difference of winning or losing out on any winnings period.
As always, our outstanding PCM9GA pairing committee members did their job well and for both the White and Red Teams, only one stroke, 2 or 3 net strokes separated the winning teams from the 2nd and 3rd place teams and also–ran teams. Several teams experienced at least one Birdie, and the team consisting of Jerry Shapiro, Steve Schwartz, Bill Wagner, and Frank Chop remarkably achieved three Birdies; two Birdies for Jerry and one for Steve Schwartz. Also notable were several golfers showing remarkable precision and accuracy with long putts such as Randy Grauerholz’s 55-foot putt that won the Hole 18 Longest Putt Contest and Lenny Liebowitz’s 45-foot putt on hole 12.
Congratulations to the first-place winners for both the White Tee and Red Tee Flights as follows:
White Tee Flight, Back Nine, Tuscany West
First Place, 8 Under Par, Net 28: Joe Oliver, John Mazzukelly, Mike Adkins, Mike Branham
Second Place, 7 Under Par, Net 29: Matt Jungels, Bill Davis, Dave Peterson
Red Tee Flight, Back Nine, Tuscany West
First Place, 10 Under Par, Net 26: Jerry Shapiro, Steve Schwartz, Bill Wagner, and Frank Chop
Second Place, 9 Under Par, Net 27: Lennie Liebowitz, Randy Grauerholz, Barry Taschner, Peter Provenzale
Closest to Pin Winners
Peter Herman, Hole 12
Mike Adkins, Hole 16
Longest Putt
Randy Grauerholz, Hole 18, 45 feet
Following our Scramble event, we all gathered for a continental breakfast at the Chianti Room and the tournament winners were announced and prizes were awarded. This current tournament was the first of what surely will be innovative, exciting, and well–received tournaments to be held with the appointment of our new PCM9GA President Ray Clements. For our PCM9GA summer tournaments through early October, we have reverted to early morning tee times to avoid the afternoon Arizona heat.
We encourage interested new PCM9GA golfers to contact our Membership Chairman, Tim Munson, at 503-460-7618.