Don Erickson and Joe Oczack
The 2019 Member Guest tournament was held over a three-day period beginning April 4 with a shoot out in the afternoon followed by a BBQ at the Mesquite for all golfers and significant others in the evening. The shoot out is always a fun event with partners playing alternate shot with elimination of teams on each hole until there are four flight winners to compete in the finals. The overall shoot out winners were the team of Harris and McCollum. The BBQ was well attended, the food was excellent and all had a good time.
The two-day competition began on April 5 with the second day on April 6. Four different nine-hole formats were played over the two days. The overall winners were the team of Kelsey and Batton, with the runner up team of Maruniak and Butcher. A significant amount of prize money was distributed.
Overall the event was a huge success thanks to the committee headed by Joe Oczak. The success was due to the committee and board listening to the membership about good and bad issues with previous member guest tournaments. The two biggest factors in the survey were too many days of consecutive golf and the cost being too high. The committee shortened the consecutive golf to two days and reduced the price point to where it was acceptable. As a result, the attendance jumped from 22 teams last year to 40 teams this year, a huge success. Guests came from all over the U.S.; California led the way with the most but we had guests from Iowa, Florida, Massachusetts, Missouri, Pennsylvania, Texas, Minnesota, Washington and the winning team guest came from South Carolina. There were five father-son teams which was a great connection for them. Ron Tie and his son Mark, the defending champs from last year came in third overall and Ron had a hole-in-one.
Thanks again to Joe Oczak and his entire team for putting on a fabulous event. A special shout out goes to Matt Hudson and Mike Karpe for their efforts in making this event a good experience. We also would like to thank the tireless Bill George who took over 300 pictures and created a wonderful video. You can see the video at the following link https://vimeo.com/331475808. Well done.