By Duncan Nixon
Correspondent
The Gray Foxes at the Lake Monticello golf course are a senior mens’ golf group. There is an eighteen-hole component and a nine-hole component. Players are not restricted to one or the other. The eighteen-hole group plays on Thursday mornings and the nine-hole group plays on Friday mornings. At the end of the season, the two groups come together for a banquet at which prizes for top performances during the season are awarded. This year the banquet was held on Nov. 14 at the Ashlawn Clubhouse.
A year-round competition that keeps all the players interested is known as “Ringers.” In this competition, which is played once a month, each player’s best gross score and best net score for each hole is recorded, and at the end of the year the lowest gross scores and the lowest net scores win prize money. This works in the following way. If a player scores six or higher on a par four hole for the first seven months, but then makes a birdie three in the final month, his score on the hole is now three. If he is a duffer who gets two handicap strokes on the hole, his net score is now one. This means that ringers’ scores for the season should be quite low. Winners in gross score in the eighteen-hole group were John Alluisi with 61, Jim Beach with 62 and Les Tinsley with 63. In net score, the winners were John Stenz with an amazing 46. He was followed by Mike Hayden at 51 and Garry Woody at 52. In nine-hole play, low gross winners were, Ken Rice with 37, Les Tinsley with 38 and Tom Sullivan with 39. Net score winners were, John Stenz at 22, Karl Heins at 26 and Dan Henry and Greg White tied at 28.
In another competition that runs the whole season, players compete in one-on-one matches against other players with similar handicaps on a match play basis. Each hole is one point. The players with the highest average scores are the money winners. For the eighteen-hole group the winners were John Horsfall with 12.167, Phil Scott with 10.67 and Bill Scanlon with 10.5. For the nine-hole group, the best three scores of five matches were added together. Match play winners were Dan Foley with 19, Ken Rice and Larry Wolfe with 18.5. Jim Wilkins and Greg White came in at 17.5. Money is awarded each week to the players who have done the best that week in gross and net scores. Leaders in overall weekly competitions for the 18-hole players were Mike Hayden, John Stenz and Paul Schmidt. Prizes are also awarded for closest to the pin on the shorter par threes.
Next year, nine-hole play will move to Tuesday morning
On a sad note, Dan Atkinson, who was again the coordinator of the eighteen-hole players announced that a founding member of the Gray Foxes, Emil Colmanares, has died at the age of 104.
