Winter Meeting - Completed (well, almost)

First a big “Thank you” to Dave and Heather for hosting the 2020 BJG Winter Meeting in their new, beautiful house.

Only 3 people didn’t make the meeting – Nick, Cirelli, and Rey. I heard Nic was looking at how cheap it was to fly right now and Cirelli has a new friend. Rey was just flying back from Florida after playing baseball with his “Rookie of the Year” bat.

Dave had soda and chips, Joe brought the party size pizza. Adam brought the Irish Car Bombs.

I started by passing out Jake’s 2019 Fed Up Cup Champ shirt and Rey’s 2019 Winter Classic Champion shirt and his Winter Classic Award. Chris accepted Rey’s shirt and plaque in his absence.

I did the briefing of the 2020 season going over some of the changes that I had already posted and why. There was some “discussion” during this briefing but I tried to push the questions to the committees to answer. Then it was time for each committee to get together and make some decisions. Democracy at its finest.

Fees Committee: Cool, calm and professional. Accepted the Commissioner’s budget for 2020 and added the following rules.

1. You must pay you 2020 BJG Fees before the first BJG golf event which is on 3/29/20, after that the Fee double from $40.00 to $80.00. Until you pay the fee, you are not eligible to win any trophies or points. If you have not paid by the Fathers and Uncles Invitational, you will no longer be a BJG member for the remained of the current year.

2. The Fees Committee will handle the “Closest to the Pin” and the “Longest Drive” events. The Scheduling Committee will look at each course and determine which holes will be “Closest to the Pin" and “Longest Drive”. The Fees Committee will handle everything from that point, through text messages, and at the golf course.

3. PAID

Chris, Jon, Adam, Steve, Jake, Joe, Joe Willie, Dan, and Cody

4. DID NOT PAY

Dave, Bryan, Rock, Rey, Cirelli, Nic and Matt

Handicap Committee: Diligent, worked well together, fully looked at and discussing each idea. They worked from the middle handicaps and then outward. This committee increased handicaps for the top two Golfers and lowered handicaps for the last 4 Golfers. I have to tell you, if you don’t play better golf, you will be on the outside looking in. This could be the most competitive season yet or it could be a dumpster fire.

Schedule Committee: Cody had some great ideas along with some good reasoning. Rock was a little late but was quickly brought up to speed and Rock concurred with the updated 2020 schedule. This was an easy committee decision.

1. Changed East Mountain to Southampton

2. Changed Fed Up Cup Championship from Oak Ridge to Chicopee

3. Changed BJG Championship back to one round of golf but added the first 3 Major scores to equal 4 rounds of golf.

4. It is your responsibility to tell your S/O about the schedule.

And then the wheels fell off.

Rules Committee: Dave and his committee had, what I thought, was the easiest committee. We already had “21 Rule of BJG”, we already had the PGA rules and we had adopted the new rule changes that came out in 2019. I just need to tighten up the “3 minute searching for a ball rule”.

Dave, maybe high on power, totally re-wrote some of these rules. Dave was bombarded with questions and it felt like he was going in circles (I’ve been there and done that). I knew there was going to be a problem when Dave said people would be going backward. Dave was being questioned so much, he may run for Commissioner next year, at least then he could tell people to shut the hell up. Dan came to Dave's defense so strongly that I forgot Dan was on a totally different committee. Heather needs to let Dave be the man of the house once in a while…

I will work with Dave to see who, what and where the problem is, how serious the problem is and then come up with a solution to that problem. Until then, the 21 Rules of BJG will remain in place. The Rules Committee did update some rules:

1. Assign each group a” timekeeper”” while looking for a lost ball

2. Assign a “Rules Official” with each group

3. Relief for plugged ball / lost ball in the fairway

4. Relief for plugged ball in a soaked, swampy area

After such a traumatic finish, the boys decided to “Chip for Cash”. When I left, they were still chipping… I hope they have better luck with their short game by the time we start the season.

Respectfully,

Broken Joe

Commissioner