As we have been seeing for the past several weeks, it was again a beautiful day for golf. Ten Pinseekers played on the back nine this day. We welcomed a new member, Sol Bellow, who, after a lesson with Tim and a couple of weeks with the Iron Men, decided to take a shot at the long course. He still needs to get his 54 holes of golf posted with the USGA to qualify for an Index Number (GHIN.) I’ve played with him on both the short course and the long course. He certainly seems to enjoy his new endeavor.
Since we were playing with less than our required number of USGA members and each member had to keep his own scorecard, we had no sweeps or championship points to add to our yearly totals.
It is easiest to say that even having no official scoring, we all had a great day and look forward to enjoying our course and our friends next week. A reminder to our members, we begin playing our winter format (first group tees of at Noon) on October 4 and will continue at this time until the first play date in May (May 24, 2025.)
Reading about the history of golf, some of this is not new but one bit was not known by me until this month. The modern game of golf originated in Scotland sometime in the 15th century. However, some historians trace the game of golf to the Roman game of paganica, a game using a bent wood stick to hit a stuffed leather ball. There are others (Chinese, Irish) who claim the origination but the Scots, and their well-known stubbornness have held tight to their story. Buried in the records you will find that the modern, peg style tees were designed in the 1890s and patented in 1925. These tees did not become popular until the inventor, Dr. William Lowell, painting the tees red to make them more findable, agreed to an endorsement contract with Walter Hagan for him to use them during his 1922 tour. Lowell signed a distribution contract with A. G. Spalding company in 1922 and by the time he received his patent for the “Reddy Tees” he had already sold $100,000 worth of tees. In today’s dollar, the $100,000 would be worth nearly $1,800,000, Not a bad payday for a dentist who just wanted to keep his hand clean.
