With the final tournament of the year completed the story of the year is the shutting down of Weatherwax Golf Course. After ore than 44 years of competing and playing golf at Weatherwax the combination of the City of Middletown and the Bowling Group has finalized the sale of the course to a land grant group, paid for with taxpayers money and in turn basically handed over to Butler Mero Parks. Many rounds of golf were played by MAGA members there but will have to look into where they will play in the future. The course will officially close on November 6, 2016. This will only affect MAGA in a couple of ways like where are the players going to establish their USGA handicaps and even though we only played 1 tournament a year there it will have to be replaced with another one. The biggest problem is where the people play on a routine basis.

 Remember if you are switching courses for 2017 of where you had your USGA handicap established, know your GHIN number and the new course can transfer all your scores and will not have to change numbers or start all over but can continue from this year.

 Here are the tournament winners at Wildwood Saturday

 1^st Place  $90 @ 64

 Barry Wills – Dick Freeman

    2^nd Place  $60 @ 65

 Rich Mealey – Jim Flannery

 3^rd Place $20 – 66

 Roger Campbell

– Steve Goertemiller

Steve Harrison – Don Hartness

Closest To The Pin @ $20

#2           Mark Mattingly

#9           Steve Harrison

#10        Mark Willenbrink

#16        Dave Lainhart

#18        Nobody

Skins @ $40

#13        Herb Holmes

#15        Roger Campbell

Low Net

1^st Place - $48

Jim Flannery – 70

2^nd Place - $16

Herb Holmes  - 71

Russ Yenser  - 71

The final year end winners were:

Side Money

Herb Holmes         - $60 @  $278

Dave Lainhart         - $40 @  $188

Jeff Young              - $20 @  $166

Net Points

Herb Holmes           - $60 @  195

Steve Goertemiller - $40  @  166

Russ Yenser             - $20 @  150

Money Leaders

Dave Lainhart     -  $60 @  $282   

Steve Harrison    -  $40 @  $245

Mark Mattingly   - $20 @  $221

This concludes the schedule for the 2016 season. Hope to see all of you next year in the MAGA. The tournaments will run from March through October in the year 2017.

A big issue for me this year was getting your scores posted on your USGA. By not putting in all your scores you may be cheating partners in the blind draw. Some people were penalized for not submitting their scores from MAGA Tournaments.  These can be put in on the internet from home with your name and GHIN number. It only takes a minute or two. There were a few scores recorded in an individual’s GHIN. If you failed to put in a high score I did nothing. You must supply your current GHIN before playing a MAGA Tourney next year. If you switch location of your GHIN handicap take your current number with you and have that transferred.

 Hope to see you next year and bring a friend to increase the number of members.

 During the whole year the number of players were down from previous years. This year we lost players at the end of the year for various reasons like injuries, their partner that they usually play with didn’t play and some did not like the formats or tees we chose to play.

 The tee selection was an issue that I made on my own. Even though the average age of our group is almost 60 of the players that play, I don’t want all tournaments to be played at the senior tee level unless that is something everybody agrees too. Some of the golfers feel those tees are too short and not enough challenge. Others feel they do not get their monies worth from that distance.

Any suggestions would be appreciated to improve next years outcome.