November 2021
Dear Senior Golf League Members,
November 1st was our last official league day. Another year of Covid cautiousness. We want to thank you for cooperating and caring about each other by using masks, distancing, etc and especially for your politeness and grace when things were confusing. This letter as usual provides some observations and highlights of our season as well as some links to photos and ideas for filling the gap until next season
Banquet
The ending of our golf season was acknowledged with an outdoor pizza, party free of charge, at the Lexington Community Center tent enjoyed by about 25 of us. Amidst a variety of pizzas, cold drinks, hot coffee and Dunkin Donuts and yummy home-made banana bread by Mike Mickelsen, there were a few awards and accolades (more about those below). Next year we hope to have a large indoor banquet at the Great Wall or equivalent.
Volunteers Needed
For a second year we relied on Andy Rittenburg to receive and respond to twice weekly golf requests. We want to spread this responsibility for the 8 months of our next season so perhaps one person does it for a month and then someone else or whatever sharing arrangement makes sense. Much is automated, so with a bit of personal attention Pairings and Start Times can be done pretty efficiently.
Similarly, we need help keeping Handicapping and Tournament Score Keeping up to date.
Please help us; tell a committee member or email your interest to: TSGLManagement@gmail.com.
Also a thank you to the Pine Meadows course staff for keeping the course in excellent shape in spite of frequent strong rainstorms and intermittent ponds. That said, some of us may have benefited from more free lifts than usual.
New Members
We hope you have had a chance to play with some of these new faces. To remind you, they are:
Arenburg, Bruce
Barr, Jack
Berry, Steve
Black, David
Compton, Doris
Fischer, John
Fleiss, Dick
Foley, Ed
Kane, John
Kvaal, Bob
Lim, Frank
McDonald, Dave
Weiland, Karl (rejoined us after a 4-year hiatus)
Wetherbee, Rich
Wilson, Ted
Golf Highlights and Handicapping
And now a little trip down memory lane about the great wins and special accomplishments by our league members this season.
Through the end of September, we had played a total of 1071 rounds not counting tournaments. Walter Kerr played the most with a whopping 43 rounds closely followed by John Demoy with 42.
Low net honors for the year goes to Arthur Barbera with a net 28 on August 30th and John Mungo with the same net on June 24th. Runners-up with a net 29 were Thomas Wanderer on July 8th and Walter Allen on May 18th. Arthur Barbera, Ted Wilson, Mike Mickelsen, and Jerry Cameron all recorded net 30s.
Low Gross of 35(!) was a tie between Walter Allen on May 18th and Jerry Cameron on April 19th. Mike Mickelsen and Eric Baatz each shot a 36. Eric and Mike also shot a 37 along with Jerry Cameron and Peter Southwick. The most sub-40 rounds were turned in by Mike Mickelsen, Jerry Cameron, and Eric Baatz who each had six.
Very large birds? We had one eagle this year, by John Breen, hole #3, on September 20th.
There were a total of 133 birdies with 35 of them coming on hole #9 and 30 coming on hole #3. Only 4 birdies were achieved on hole #5. Despite the water, #9 was the third easiest hole for our group with an average score of 1.17 over par. Of course, our tees were always at the bottom of the hill…. The easiest hole (by scoring average) was #3 at just 1.05 over par, followed by #7 at 1.12 over par. It is no surprise that #2 was hardest at 1.90 over par, followed by #5 at 1.79 and #1 at 1.60. All those numbers are slightly higher than last year. Well, we are all older, despite the injection of the young(?) blood from our new members.
Results for all the 2021 tournaments (and previous years) are here:
https://www.tsglma.org/tournament-results/#2021TournamentResults-anchor
Pictures
Yes we caught you in the act of golfing and winning and having fun with fellow members. Sorry if we didn’t capture everyone, but we were trying to golf too! Click this link to see all the happy people: https://www.tsglma.org/gallery/
Excursion Golf Outings
A bunch of us tried other challenging courses to see how much worse our scores can be and to see if we can keep our sense of humor. And yes there were BIG numbers but beer after the round helped the humor to return.
Thanks to Rick Atkins and Mike Spence who arranged many of the excursions this year and took much of the burden off me (Arthur Daltas).
We played a new record 25 excursions, up from 15 in prior years. Four courses were new to our group: Blackstone, Crystal Lake, Merrimack Valley, and Four Oaks. We also played for example Tewksbury, Patriot, Sandy Burr, Stow Acres South, Meadow at Peabody, Campbell’s Scottish Highlands, Black Swan, George Wright, Overlook, Mt. Hood, Butter Brook and Red Tail. There are 35 people on the email invite list and usually we have 8 to 12 golfers for each excursion. If you want to be added to that email list for next year, let a committee member know or send a message to the league email, TSGLManagement@gmail.com. (And let us know if we should take you off.)
This Winter: Indoor Golf, Ping Pong etc.
We have a small group of golfers who like to play indoor golf on simulators at Big Sticks in Burlington. All our real clubs are used and we play famous courses around the world. If you would like to be on the email list for when we plan to play contact Arthur Daltas or Mike Mickelsen or drop us an email. Or just go on your own when you can or take some lessons. Big Sticks owner Terry Felty has been a sponsor of our banquets.
Peter Yee is active with folks who play ping pong at the Lexington Community Center. Contact him or the Center if you are interested in that and the other activities at the center
Feedback
Finally, if you have comments and feedback about last year and/or ideas for next year please talk to any committee member or email us at TSGLManagement@gmail.com What do you think of the mix of tournament formats we used like blind match, scrambles, individual net, etc? Awards? Communications? Website? https://www.tsglma.org/
We plan to monitor email traffic only from time-to-time and then you’ll start hearing from us regularly in early Spring 2022.
We hope your holidays and winter season are very happy and safe. We’ll see you on the course next year! Watch your email for announcements.
Best to all of you,
The Senior Golf League Committee
Arthur Daltas, Meeting Chair/Town-Course/Excursions/Treasurer
Eric Baatz, Rules, Webmaster
Mike Mickelsen, Handicapping/Communications/Asst.Treasurer
Andy Rittenburg, Daily Pairings/League Starter
Emeritus: John Demoy, Jim Kirk, Youngjo Sul, Peter Yee