Business Golf: Club Championship: Bring Your Pitchfork and Hoe

I know many of you are members of golf clubs or country clubs. If not, you should consider it, especially if you are playing at least six rounds of golf each month…But more on the advantages of being a member of a country club later.

One of the features a golf club or country club has for golfers is the opportunity to play in the Club’s annual Championship. These tournaments have been going on since the beginning of time, or at least as far back when members of a clan would compete against each other for the honor of being the clan’s champion. The contests would be something that included sword wielding or pole throwing or some other contest made for the burly men of the clan.

Who knew back when wearing Bull’s Horns on your head was in style that the member who won the clan’s annual contest would today be the club champion. Not much has changed with the exception that the bull horns that the club champion wears today has a Taylor Made logo on it.

Back then there were huge advantages in being champion of the clan. You received benefits like; the admiration from the entire clan as being their best…their champion. The champ got things like; he is the first to eat from the fresh kill of deer or whatever the heck was killed that day. He got to camp out next to the fire during the winter instead of being pushed out to the outskirts of town where it is cold and dark; and …OH,…AH…well, the champ got a lot of chicks and everyone bought his beers…

Over the years the contest for the clan is now golf and not battle to the death or nude leg wrestling or whatever the clan leader wanted to challenge the clan with.

In today’s club championship you usually have some pretty awesome golfers stepping up to the plate to try their hand at winning the club championship and all of its wonderful honors. Oh, yes! They get the honor and the members all slap him on the back. The members admire his style and start wearing the same bull horns. Instead of getting to eat first at the kill, today’s champion gets a dinner in his honor; instead of getting a spot close to the fire, today’s champion gets a parking spot two steps from the locker room door; and…AH….yes, they get all of the chicks and everyone buys all of their beers…but that is not the point.

The point is, like in the olden days, there were a bunch of dudes hanging around that really were not cut out for the championship…you know the dudes. You saw them in the old movies. Those guys standing on the sidelines when the white knight rides up and would always be holding pitchforks and hoes cheering the knight on to victory. You know, the peasants… The same guys are here today, they just have 20 or 25 handicaps…

The pitch-fork guys where the warm-up band for the main event. They usually juggled or do some sort of gymnastics in front of the crowd while the main act was back stage getting ready or …AH…you know,…. they always got the chicks and the beers so what do you expect they were doing?

These pitchfork guys did not have the skill needed to compete at the contest, but could have if they had some sort of equalizer. There was not a handicap system for jousting back then.

The competition in today’s club championship is a little different. There are still the guys juggling, but instead of a pitchfork and hoes these guys are holding Pings and Adams golf clubs. The P&A guys get to play in the club championship but they are more like the juggling and gymnastic acts of old. The astonishing thing is that even after the USGA in concurrence of the R&A spent years of developing the tested and true player’s handicap and index system, the P&A guys still are not allowed to go for the club championship. No, the Ping and Adams guys have to stay in their own flight and compete only for their name being placed on the scoreboard (and the newspaper if the head professional remembers to send it in and the newspaper has room to put in the 8^th and 9^th flight winners).

When you look at it, the process just does not seem fair. If you questioned this back then you were carried off to shovel crap…Oh, wait that is also going on today.

I agree with the powers of being that the best golfer should represent the club, and that is perfectly fine. That is the way it should be. I am sure it was the same back in the olden days; it would not be too cool to claim that your club champion was won by the guy with the pitchfork or hoe.

So! My question to all of the P&A guys out there? Why pony up the cash to compete in a tournament that has less glory for you if you win and no way for you to be the club champion. Wouldn’t it be just as interesting to park in the auxiliary parking lot across the street from the club with the rest of us and stand watching on the sidelines with your pitchfork and hoe?

Scot Duke

President

Innovative Business Golf Solutions, LLC.

scot.duke@innovativebusinessgolf.com

www.innovativebusinessgolf.com

‘My Blog’ http://businessgolf.blogspot.com

http://businessgolf.wordpress.com

Author of: ‘How To Play Business Golf’, From The Boardroom To The Fairways…

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