2015 CGA Interclub

From Captain Jim Eliassen:

Our players enjoyed the first day of sunshine for the month Saturday and scored an impressive first round victory over the combined Murphy Creek/Saddle Rock Men's Club.

We won 11-7 at Lone Tree GC and overwhelmed the competition scoring 16 of 18 points at Murphy Creek!

Congratulations to Brendan Dennis, Jerry Beren, Derek Dodd, Peter Garvin, Pete Pagano, Tim Gaylord, Steve Bryant, Mark Gunther, Mark Cramer, Nate Yeomans, Bob Emmett and Bill McDermott!

We play our next Match on Friday, June 12th, against a very strong South Suburban Team. Surprisingly, not many Members submitted their names for this Match but we have put together another strong team (see below). We want to play as many Members as we can so more can enjoy the fun and camaraderie representing LTMGC. As both Mark Cramer and Jerry Beren commented prior to the match, we are all experienced in competing in Individual and Team Events but representing your Club generates a little extra excitement.

I will be soliciting players for the Friday, July 17th, Match against The Meadows GC after our match with South Suburban. They are also a strong Team as South Suburban defeated The Meadows 19-17 in their first match earlier in May.

Enjoy the sunshine and I hope more of you submit your names in the future to represent the LTMGC in these matches!

From Captain Jim Eliassen:

We finally played our rescheduled CGA Interclub Match with South Suburban on Friday, June 26th, and tied 18-18 in a hard fought match!

We had some shining moments as Bill McDermott birdied 3 holes on the front nine at Lone Tree GC firing a solid 38. As Mike Anderson commented, Bill's opponent was in total shock! Randy Gaddis had his hands full at South Suburban GC as he fired a solid even par 72 and lost to James Kurtenbach who fired an outstanding 2 under 70. Jim Juracka and Bob Berning also shot some outstanding scores winning their matches at South Suburban GC!

We are currently evaluating all the players who submitted their names for the upcoming match with The Meadows GC on Friday, July 17th.

As of this point in the round robin matches involving our group, the standings are as follows:

Lone Tree Men's Club 47

The Meadows Men's Club 35

South Suburban Men's Club 35

Saddle Rock/Murphy Creek Men's Club 27

So, we are doing well headed into our third match but we need to play tough to remain at the top. The team with the most points after these round robin matches within our group, advances to the Playoffs which commence in the latter part of August.

We'll keep you posted!

From Captain Jim Eliassen:

While our home team lost 5-13 to The Meadows on Friday, our road team won 12-6 at their course. The total score of 17-19 gives our Club a total of 64 points to end group play, while The Meadows has 54. South Suburban has 35 points but has one match left (vs Saddle Rock/Murphy Creek). This means that South Suburban would need 30 out of the available 36 points in that match to beat us in the group stage. Unlikely, but stay tuned. Their match is scheduled for Thursday, this week.

There was lots of drama in Friday's matches against The Meadows. At Lone Tree, Brendan Dennis played well but couldn't stay with his competitor's excellent 33 on the back side. As the Alternate "B" player, Jim Eliassen had to come in for the injured Jim Juracka and won one point for the good guys by pushing his competitor. That got us on the board, but down 11-1 in points after the A & B matches! Pete Pagano has been money all year, but he couldn't coast in his match, and had to win the 18th hole to win his individual match and help win the team match, for 4 points.

At The Meadows, Bryan Rowe was in a close dog fight the entire match, but birdied the 17th hole to close out his opponent 2 and 1. Paul Jagel's competitor know he was in trouble when Paul birdied the first hole of the match. Paul went on to record a sparkling 38 on the front side and ground down his opponent to win 4 and 2. Bob Emmett loves drama. He went 3 up on his opponent early, was All Square after the 10th hole, went down one on 17, then won the last hole to earn a point. Paul and Bob also won their team match, so they totaled 5 points for Lone Tree. In the C group, Bob Berning continued his sterling Interclub play and found a way to win 2 points after being down 1 after 13 holes. Karl Kiefer tried to give his match away on the front nine but came back from 4 down with 5 holes to play to earn a point. Karl shocked his opponent by shooting a 39 on the back side, including a par, birdie, par, par, par, par finish. Bob and Karl also won 2 points for the team match on the 18th hole.

We will get back to you when we get the results from South Suburbans match this coming Thursday. Hopefully, we will be soliciting players for our first playoff match!

From Captain Jim Eliassen:

The Lone Tree Golf Club defeated the Foothills Golf Club on Sunday, August 16th, to advance to the CGA Team Interclub Quarterfinals!

Steve Bryant fired a 3 under par 69 at Foothills GC to defeat their +2 Club Champion 4&3 (he had to give Steve 3 strokes). Mark Gunther shot a steady 74 to win his match 2 up. Brian Gifford won his match 2&1 and your aging Captain had to play and shot a steady 75 to win 4&3. The interesting sideline of the A and B matches played at Foothills is that all four of us won our Individual matches but in some sort of non-Euclidean universe, both Teams lost the Four Ball Matches! Ham and Egg time!

John Stratford and Karl Kiefer had to play from their Blue Tees too as John held on in a tight match winning his match 1 up! Karl ran into a buzz saw on the back nine as his opponent was one under par (15.1 Low Handicap Index - Hellooooo Handicap Chairman) until he closed Karl out on the 15th hole. We won 10-8 at the Foothills GC.

As far as the matches conducted at Lone Tree GC, Ryan Carr fired a 71 including 5 birdies won 4&3. Joe Gardner shot 79 but won all three holes he had strokes on to eek out a slim 1 up victory! Paul Jagels has his steady game back as he shot an 80 to win his match 7&6. David Green lost at tight match 1 Down. Bruce Larsen, subbing for Pete Pagano at the last minute due to Pete's HC getting too low for the C Flight, won his match 2 Up! Assistant Captain, Mike Anderson, reigning supreme to lead his troops to victory at Lone Tree, reflects that Bruce attempted to give away his match with an unremarkable 52 n the backside but survived as his opponent melted down even worse with a more unremarkable 54! Mike Gregory played well (87) but his opponent really played better beating Mike 4&2. We won 12-6 at Lone Tree GC!

Our next opponent will be the winner of Todd Creek GC in Thornton and Sunset GC in Historic Old Longmont. Todd Creek is the #1 Seed as the top point scoring team and Sunset is #16. South Suburban played against Sunset two years ago and got whipped as Sunset is a tree-lined 9 hole golf course so I bet they play Todd Creek tough!

Stay in touch as I'll be soliciting players for our match in the ELITE EIGHT in the near future, date TBD!