By TONY CHERBY
BUENA — The Ocean City Tuesday Senior Golf League finished its 2024 match play rounds with Captain Dave Carter having his second monster day in as many weeks.
He put together a league-leading low gross 83, which is also the second best for the year. Ironically Dave’s opponent, Roger Probert, owns the season’s top score, if only by a smidgeon; his 82 came a few weeks ago. He also equaled Dave’s score for the day, so their twin 83s made for quite a round. Those were only the first of the stars in this story that seemed to be lining up.
Pilot Probert has a single-digit handicap, a very enviable 7; no one else comes close, so he’s the most estimable opponent that we have. But Dave prevailed this time with a net 65, another win for him this week. Also, his net 64 a few weeks ago gives him the best single-day net for the year, and that goes along with his average net for 2024 which is also the best. Tony Cornell did come close to catching him though, ending up less than half a swing higher. Want exact numbers? Carter’s average net was 74.16 and Tony finished with 74.45. If baseball is a “game of inches,” perhaps golf could be called a “game of millimeters.”
Carter’s win carried with it 4 more notches, so he ended the year as runner-up for Most Points (31). But that’s still a sizable 9 dings less than Ralph DeLanzo’s tally. And RD ended up in Dave’s foursome; more stars just jumped in line for our little opera. Ralph, as you surely must know by now, has occupied the top rung of the points leaderboard since his very first swing of the year, on the par-3 17th back on May 21. It translated into the first of his five Closest to the Pin wins. He is also having great year; for him, that’s merely “par for the course.” Speaking of which, DeLanzo leads the league with 62 pars and Carter is next, with 47. Of course, it must be said that Roger Probert, who rejoined the league late in the season, logged just five rounds to Ralph and Dave’s 13 but he had 36 pars. (And then there was that eagle!) Next year is already shaping up to be very interesting.
The biggest story of the day was Carter’s putting, the best we’ve seen in our two-year, 51-week tenure at Buena Vista Country Club. Dave only expended 25 swings on the recently aerated greens, where raggedy holes punctuated by sand and crusty surfaces in between made that accomplishment exponentially more impressive. Dave’s card boasts five one-putts on the front and seven on the back, for a record-setting 13/12/25 count. Put another way, Dave one-putted two-thirds of all the holes, not coming close to a downwind sniff of a three-putt.
Ask Ed Lyons, who was in Dave’s foursome along with Ralph DeLanzo, how remarkable Deadly Dave’s putting was. Ironically, either Ed or Dane Mayson looked like a lock for fewest single-day short sticker tally in 2024: each had a 26-putt round. They were scheduled for our planned putt-off to determine which would take home the trophy. Well, scratch that. Carter will be sure to take good care of that pretty crystal.
Ed told me he was as impressed by Dave’s chipping as he was with his putting. Carter’s short game left him with makable up-hillers time after time, Ed reported. And as anyone who knows anything about our game will tell you, great chipping is usually the most important ingredient for cooking up one-putts, and for avoiding ugly three-putts, at least for amateurs.
As if that all wasn’t enough, Dave’s 10 pars tied Probert for most in a single round, but Roger did it twice, and he also did bagged a birdie this time.
DeLanzo nailed the only other feathery fellow for the day, and he won his fifth Closest to the Pin, this time on hole No. 8. So, other than pin wins on five, 12, and 17, every highlight (Low Gross, Low Net, Fewest Putts, Most Pars, and Birdies) took place courtesy of the Carter/Probert, Lyons/DeLanzo foursome.
It’s also worth noting that DeLanzo’s five pin wins are second only to Rich Hawthorne’s six. And Rich deserves a shout out here since he only competed seven times. Six pin wins in seven rounds with 28 trips to the plate. Wow! Cornell and I might have to stop bringing up those ancient Korean War-Era irons that he sports.
All the contests in our 13th and final match play round ended with 4-0 sweeps. Brandreth overcame The Ghost; it was Carter over Probert; Lyons handled DeLanzo; Baird bested Mayson; Borucki defeated Cornell; Schultz destroyed yours truly; Coppenbarger took care of Wrigh; Hiner defeated Gardner; and Gahr prevailed over Kelly.
Next week, we scramble. After that, we’ll celebrate the conclusion of our 33rd consecutive season of play over a fine meal, followed by an Awards Ceremony.
WEEKLY WINNERS
LOW GROSS Dave Carter, Roger Probert (83)
LOW NET Dave Carter (65)
FEWEST PUTTS Dave Carter (25) Best ever at BVCC
MOST PARS Dave Carter (10) Ties Probert for Best of 2024
BIRDIES Ralph DeLanzo, Roger Probert
CLOSEST TO THE PINS
No. 5: Doug Baird 13′
No. 8: Ralph DeLanzo 6’7″
No. 12: Stan Borucki 15’1″
No. 17: Bill Wright 14’3″