By TONY CHERBY/For the Sentinel
BUENA VISTA — For the last two weeks of the season, the Ocean City Tuesday Senior Golf League scramble(d) because all but two of our nine annual Season’s Best awards are settled.
The only ones still up for grabs are best pin wins on holes 8 and 17. (Dave Carter and Greg Harlan aced 5 and 12.) Marks to beat are a 2’10” shot on 8, and a 3’3” whack on 17.
Of course, in addition to all those Season’s Best awards, Bill “the Thrill” Wright also hands out seven weekly prizes for Low Gross, Low Net, Fewest Putts, and four Pin Wins after our 50/50. No wonder we don’t have any money left for donuts with our coffee.
In any case, we scramble. Well, to be technical, we Best-Ball-Shotgun-Scramble. After our “free” coffee and OJ, and after we ignore, forget, or can’t even hear in the first place, Dave “Captain for Life” Carter’s directions de jour on the way out the door, we try to find our carts. And then we try to find our assigned holes; that’s the scramble part which shouldn’t be a challenge, this being our fifth year at Buena Vista Country Club.
Each team starts at a different tee to speed things up. (It never works.) That’s the shotgun part, which, despite the sobriquet, seldom involves gun play. Next, we stretch, take our morning meds, and declare excuses for why we are going to play lousy. Then we do drives. We use the best, and all the other bests that follow, which are often misses. We do this 18 times, probably because there are 18 holes. In turn, that’s because Old Tom Morris, “Keeper of the Greens,” came up with 18 in 1864 after transforming the ancient links at St. Andrews.
Since in golf low score wins, we decided to do the same in our scrambles. And this time, Team Lou Salgado, Bill Mackey, Greg Harlan and Tom Gahr won. Starting on 1 (the easy one to find), they birdied 3 and 7, with no bogeys on their outward jaunt. Then on the way home, they birdied 15 and 16. We often call the back nine the “homeward nine” because they get you to the parking lot, and you need your car to get homeward. And BVCC’s homeward trek is where its toughest holes reside. But the winners escaped those too, turning in a 68: 4 under par on a rare, bogey-free “clean card.”
Speaking of par, back in Old Tom’s Day there was no such thing, nor were there GPS, wooden tees and beer carts; nothing! All they had was a ball stuffed with feathers, and dirt tees. They just added up the number of times they hit, or meant to hit but missed. Anyway, the runners-up at -3 were Team Frank Coppenbarger, George Curtis, Rick Schultz and me. We also bagged 5 birdies, but 2 bogies. George “The Inspector” had the Putt of the Day – a greasy 35+ footer on 12. (Someone said it was over 40, but who’s counting?) And on 13, Rocket Rick chipped on from the high left side of the two-tiered green to a blind pin, way down below on that insane lower level. He got to 2 feet for the Chip of the Day. Then Philly Frank birdied 18 all by himself after a huge drive and the Fairway Shot of the Day, a 145-yarder to 8 inches. No one reported anything better than those shots, so I have to go with what I saw.
Oh, wait! Bruce “Is He Here Yet?” Goldberg, who shows up every so often when we scramble, did have a story. Over 50 years ago, he and Pat Chestnut (not Joey the hot dog guy) played ice hockey together in Philly. They didn’t realize it until now. And he, Lapham, Hawthorne and Greene came in third at -1. They caged 3 birdies but suffered bogies on our nemeses, 10 and 13. So, there’s that math again: 3 birdies +2 bogeys = -1, for third place.
Two groups tied at +1 for Dead-Solid-Last: Team Lyons, Carter, Wright and Chestnut, and Team DeLanzo, Baird, England and Van Zandt. Lyons, et. al, started great at -2 after 5 holes, but ran out of gas and didn’t cage any more flutteries. They did not more than make up for it with 3 bogies. But DeLanzo and Co. did birdie 2 of their last 6 after 3 early bogies, so they did avert a lone last place finish with some heroics near the end. Which is the best I can do with those two scorecards.
This week, we scramble for our season’s finale. Then we wrap up our 35th year of fun in the sun and in, on or under the turf with lunch and the annual awards presentation.
Correction: last week, I said Carter holds our fewest putts record at BVCC. Nope, Rich Hawthorne’s 24 in 2025 is our best. Carter’s 25-count happened in 2024.