The Royal Oaks Member-Guest, 2012 Version

Last night I got home after spending three days in Vancouver, Washington. My business there was the 2012 Royal Oaks Member-Guest golf tournament, my fourth straight appearance there (see the ’11 entry) and something like my sixth overall. This year my regular partner Paul Sharkey was out of town so I played with fellow Greenspan Cup buddy Jon Gaston.

With my regular ROMG partner Paul Sharkey out of town, this year I paired with my good buddy Jon Gaston.

Different partner, same result.

We didn’t win.

It’s not like we didn’t have our chances. We jumped right out of the gate early with a 15-5 drubbing of our first-round opponents and followed it up with a 13-7 win in the second round. We were three up through three in our third match — and then something happened. Not sure what, exactly, but we lost five of the next six holes on our way to losing 13-7 to the eventual flight winners. Even still we were tied for first in our flight going in to the last day.

Saturday uniforms by Maybelline.

We just didn’t get it done.

We were up two after two and then proceeded to completely collapse and lose 13-7 in the fourth round. We needed a miracle to advance in the final round and a 10-10 tie wasn’t it. We ended up with 52 points, good for third in our six-team flight. Two wins, two losses and a tie. Not what either of us were shooting for.

As with other Royal Oaks Member-Guests, however, I’ll take fond memories from the trip. I stayed with Jon and Annette Gaston for the full three days and they could not have treated me better. We came in third in Thursday afternoon horse race, my highest finish in quite a while. In that horse race I hole a seemingly impossible flop shot in an eight-team playoff to advance to the finals — and took quite a few high fives thereafter. I followed that up on Friday afternoon with what had to be one of the shots of my life. I was only seventy yards from the green on no. 15 but I was in deep rough and the tree limbs in front of me precluded hitting one in the air. My solution: hit it into the bunker with enough speed that it would pop up and stop on the green. Magically it worked — and it stopped just six feet from the hole, a shot for the ages if ever there was one.

A barely adequate performance on Saturday morning had me bound for the train station on Saturday afternoon.

Unfortunately our opponent made his twenty footer for birdie and I missed mine on the high side. The story of our tournament.

And like the saying goes, until next year …

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The Royal Oaks Member-Guest 2011: The Downward Trend Continues

At the 2009 Royal Oaks Member-Guest, Paul Sharkey and I won our division and finished second overall.

Twenty-six points on Friday gave us an outside shot of winning ...

Last year, we finished middle of the pack in our division thanks to a horrific start.

but on Saturday we played as bad as we looked in these overstriped Adidas shirts.

This year, we started badly and finished worse. On Saturday we won just one hole in our nine-hole match on our way to the business end of a 15-5 drubbing. Sharkey’s magical short game, which carried us on Friday, was nowhere around. We ended up in the middle of the pack in our division this time but, thanks to a new format, we were only competing against five teams. Not embarrassing, but not good either.

As disappointed as we were with our play, I’ll take a few fond memories from the event. I birdied our last hole (No. 7) with a difficult ten-foot sidehill putt to win our second match on Thursday. Then I made a fifteen foot dead downhill slider on the last hole (No. 3) of our next match to tie the team that ended up winning our flight. The latter was particularly satisfying because I got up and down from 125 yards out with a punch three iron under the trees, a shot I got plenty of practice on during the tournament.

Clutch for a couple of holes. Unfortunately, I didn’t do much for the other 43.

As it turns out, Greenspan Cup was well represented. Longtime World Team vet and our cronie Brad Nelson paired with future Greenspanner Michael Richardson to finish second overall. No word on how much they made but I’m fairly certain that for Nelson, Greenspan ’12 is officially paid for.

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From First to, Well, Not First

At last year’s Royal Oaks member/guest, Paul Sharkey and I took first in our division.

Not this year.

Thanks to a horrific start — we were +5 after five holes — we didn’t get it done. We came back okay yesterday to finish middle of the pack in our division and had a pretty nice day today, but we were just too far back after Day One to get it done. We ended up third low net in our division. Not bad, but not first.

A few pics:

The welcoming sign. I'd have liked to have been in the room when they decided on which words to capitalize on that last line.

Still pals on day two despite a disasterous day one.

Thirty yards short of the green after this drive on No. 7 -- still only made par.

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Mulligans Are There For a Reason

This weekend I played in the Royal Oaks Member/Guest with my good buddy Paul Sharkey. This was the fourth time we’d played together in the annual event. In years past we hadn’t made much noise.

This year, however, we did quite well.

Yesterday we fired a two-over 74 (net 62) in alternate shot to finish at 128. Our round featured my first ever, semi-well executed driver off the deck, Alvaro Quiros style. We won our flight gross by like eight shots. We tied for first low net in our flight (128) and tied for second overall, two strokes behind Casey Ribera’s team (Greenspan ’07).

Other than the par 5 6th, which we double bogeyed, we played like a couple of Tour stars. We missed a handful of birdie putts inside of ten feet. Had we made even half of them, we would have won the whole thing.

And it’s not like we didn’t have the chance.

At the beginning of the tournament we bought mulligans — one each per person per day. On Friday we flat forgot about them. We ended up shooting a respectable 66, but if we make good use of one of our two mulligans it’s a 65. I remembered them on Saturday on the second tee. We ended up using mine but not Paul’s. So we used ONE of our FOUR mulligans. Put two of the four to good use and we tie for first.

Still, it was a great event and we had a blast. We knew we were within shouting distance on the back nine on Saturday and we played in in one under. Pressure was on, we got it done. Big time.

Not unlike a certain Mr. Woods.

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