Dear TMGC members

First and foremost I just want to say how excited I am to be serving as your Tournament Chairman for the 2012 season. During my five years on the board we have both generated and received a lot of great feedback as it relates to our tournament schedules and formats and I look forward to doing my best to apply that over the next two years.

I am very excited to announce the addition of a NEW Interclub Match with Rolling Meadows Country Club in nearby Ellington, CT. Some might ask, “Jared, is it a coincidence that one of your first orders of business as Tournament Chair was to set up an interclub with a course that is just 2.5 miles from your home?” My answer to that would be “Yes, just a coincidence.” Think of the advantages, in my free time in preparation for the match I can hide in the woods and pick up on the tendencies of their players or better yet, jog over after hours and create contour maps of the greens. In all seriousness, Al & I had lunch with their President and Tournament Director last week and they seem very engaged in not just the Club but in this event.

In addition to the new match with Rolling Meadows we will also have a chance to repeat as victors in our Interclub match with Wintonbury Hills (click here for 2011 recap). We had a great turnout for that event last year and I look forward to the same this year. Outside of Topstone, Wintonbury Hills is one of the best tracks in the Hartford area so don’t miss out on this opportunity to represent your club.

One of the initiatives the Board and I are exploring this year is the feasibility of bringing back the Member-Guest event. Before going too far down the path on this one we really need member feedback so if you could take a few minutes to give us your thoughts when we put out a brief email survey in March I would really appreciate it.

One of my goals for 2012 is to make the Match Play Tournament more logistically friendly and in turn, fill the brackets this year. We continue to have no problems with that on the team side, but were still 2 men short on Individual last year. For those of you unfamiliar with the event, we have an Individual Event with 64 players and a 2 Man Team Match Play Event with 32 teams. Qualifying rounds are played in April and once the brackets are released you’ll be required to play about 1 match per month of the season for as long as you keep winning!

You won’t see many dramatic changes to the schedule this season. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. We did add a modified alternate shot event on October 6-7. Both players will play from the tee, but then alternate shots from there on out. Talk about a true test of your friendship with our partner. I don’t even like hitting from the woods when I’m the one who hit it there.

Ringers has been growing every year and because of that we’ve been able to pay out higher and deeper in this season long event. I’d love to get up to close to 150 members in this one in 2012. This is one of our two CASH payout events (along with the Hole-in-One pool). There are gross and net payouts for this tournament and we’ve seen in the results from prior years that even higher handicaps make their way into the Top 10 on the gross side too. Make sure to get your $10 before your first round of the season so you don’t lose that rare birdie or eagle on your season scorecard.

For those of you I haven’t met or played with I look forward to hopefully sharing the tee with you this season!

Jared Albert
tournament chairman, tmgc
jaa194@yahoo.com

Download a 2012 returning membership form.

Download a 2012 new membership application.