Me and three other guys represented my company in a scramble put on by one of our major customers. It was held in Kokomo, IN. There were fourteen teams in this shotgun start. The number of teams becomes important later.
Even though your score had no bearing on the prizes you could win, there were plenty of prizes to be awarded.
In addition to drawing prizes, they had:
2 longest drive holes
2 closest to the pin in two holes
4 closest to the pin holes on the par 3's
2 longest putt greens
During the round, your host was on FIVE of the prize stakes at one time!
I had a longest drive, both closest to the pin in twos and two of the closest to the pins on the par 3's.
I don't need to elaborate on how good the shots were, except to say, as we ate, I asked how many did the group think I won of the five I got to sign up for.
One guy said 3 and the other two said I won at least 2. I smiled and said, "I pick zero, just because it is me. Who wants to bet?" They all just laughed.
I won zero, naturally.
We finished fifth in the scramble for the score turned in (-7) and I got to pick fifth for the number for where my group got to pick from the prize pool.
I drew #14.
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10 comments:
You don't need luck Mike, you got skill! Do you really need another golf umbrella or set of old sun-faded headcovers that have been sitting around the pro shop for 4 years?
mike,
do you want to play some heads up poker?
beerhog
i scoped out the shark club in howell friday night.
i signed up for the $25 tourney. big mistake because there were only 12 players and the 1-2 cash game was like taking candy from a baby. the tourney players were a joke. if they hit any part of the flop they would ride it to the end almost everytime. i did not cash, but i could have if i had played my usual cards. i got bored quick thinking about all the money i was loosing out on at the cash game. i went all in on pocket 10's in bad positon got 2 callers a5 and aq. ace on the flop and i was cooked. but i did get back to the cash game and pulled in 220 in around 3 hrs play. i definetly will be back soon. cards fly everyday at 5pm for the cash games. 1-2 40min buy in or 2-5 200 min buy in. tourney play starts at 8pm every night 25 buy in.
beerhog
Fred is that the Shark's club right near I96 and the D19 exit, I guess just north of your house? My kid had a game at Howell High School last Sat. and I noticed a poker sign out front driving by. It was in the middle of a construction zone I think.
It sounds like typical charity poker places to me. I think the action at them is drying up a little now that we are in a post-boom poker era. The games at the 700 bowl in SL have ended, but at the last one myself and a buddy had a similar clean-up. I don't think I am all-that as a poker player, but guys there were calling with absolutely nothing.
On another note I am think about getting a game together at my house, maybe this weekend. Who here is interested (all are welcome).
matchy,
yes, d19 & 96. count me in for the game.
beerhog
A game sounds good to me....
7Jokers
Faldo,
When it gets a little closer, please let me know who you are picking to win the Super Bowl. I will be in need of some cash after the holidays and will pick the team you don't!!!
Chesky,
I am out for a game if it is this Saturday. I have the White Lake game.
Boother
Matchy, I am a definite maybe for your poker game this weekend. Hope you get enough with or without me.
Boother, I am hurt that you would use my Whale football pick method - using me as the Whale. I didn't say you were wrong, just that it hurts. ;-)
Guys, I am out for the Tuesday night tourney. I have a political speech lined up for that night. I think it is the Barton Hills Brokeback Mt. Fan Club that invited me to speak. They said they will supply a 12 pack of beer so there will be plenty for everyone.
So - Beerhog or Matchy - get in there and email me who finished where Tuesday. I'm counting on you two mopes.
Now that is scary.
The Hustlers
Dave Lauridsen
In high-stakes golf, Vegas-style, the stakes just keep getting higher
From March - April 2006
by Brad Reagan
On a sweltering Friday afternoon in mid- July, Russ Hamilton sat in the grillroom at the Tournament Players Club at Summerlin watching that morning's highlights from the British Open. When I joined him at the table, Tiger Woods was draining a four-footer for yet another scrambling par. "That's my kind of golf," Hamilton said approvingly. "Keep it in the fairway, get up and down." He finished a bite of his chicken salad sandwich, then added, "I could get up and down from a pile of cow [manure] if I had to."
It's not clear where Hamilton might have practiced that shot recently, as the view from the clubhouse revealed nothing but a vast expanse of upscale suburbia. The Las Vegas Valley is shaped like a bowl, and the master-planned community of Summerlin sits on the western rim next to the Red Rock Canyon National Conservation Area, looking down on the monstrous casinos that line the bottom of the dish. When Howard Hughes acquired the 22,500-acre tract (and named it for his grandmother, whose maiden name was Summerlin), it was a barren patch of desert a good twelve miles from the modest gambling halls that comprised the Las Vegas Strip. In the thirty years since the mad billionaire died, the city has swelled to fill the Valley and the development company that bears his name scraped away the tumbleweeds and replaced them with stucco mansions, emerald lawns and swimming pools the color of cheap aftershave. The buttoned-down professionals who live here make for a convincing illusion that Las Vegas is no different than Phoenix or any other thriving Sun Belt city.
But, of course, that is untrue. This is a city built on the lure of easy money, and it seems to harbor a disproportionate number of real estate speculators, nightclub promoters and personal-injury lawyers. Risk-takers, to be sure, but diluted versions of the kind of man willing to bet thousands on whether he could get up and down from a pile of cow dung.
Hamilton is a professional gambler, the embodiment of the ethos that built this improbable desert playground. He's won millions betting on sports, and he's one of twenty-nine men to have won the Main Event at the World Series of Poker. When considering a wager with Hamilton, it's wise to recall the advice of gambling legend Thomas "Amarillo Slim" Preston, who liked to tell reporters, "If I tell you a goose can pull a plow, well, hitch him up."
Two days before we met, Hamilton concluded another impressive performance in the World Series, finishing fifty-ninth and earning $145,875. But he was already thinking ahead to another, potentially more lucrative, opportunity: a high-stakes golf match against a young Los Angeles businessman named Kasey Thompson. Despite spending twelve hours a day the past week playing cards instead of hitting balls, Hamilton liked his chances.
"Let me put it like this," he said, drawing on a poker analogy. "I lost one hand when a guy hit a two-outer on me," meaning Hamilton had a greater than 90 percent chance of winning before his opponent got one of only two cards in the deck that could improve his hand. "I think I'm a bigger favorite in this match than I was in that hand."
At fifty-seven, with a full head of sandy-blond hair, Hamilton is slightly round in the face and the middle, though considerably less so since a gastric bypass operation four years ago helped him drop more than a hundred pounds. He had already been a serious golfer when he arrived in Nevada in 1980 from Detroit, where he was also an oddsmaker and bookie. "The FBI came to my door a couple of times and wanted me to testify against some people, so I said, It's time to get out of here."
Viva Las Vegas.
When Hamilton pulled into town, he found that gamblers, gangsters and casino execs—in those days, the differences among the three were often negligible—battled daily on the links for skyscraping sums. He quickly got his golf game in fighting shape and became one of the most feared hustlers in town. His success owes little to steely nerves or even to his enviable short game. It's due to his skill in "making the game"—structuring a match so that he is either giving or getting the strokes he needs to ensure at least a slight advantage.
"The thing that makes Russ so good is that he's a great negotiator, because he doesn't mind not getting the sale," Denny Mason, a local businessman and frequent gambling partner of Hamilton's, told me. "I won't walk off the course without gambling, but he will. If he doesn't like the match, he'll just leave."
Link for rest of article
http://www.travelandleisure.com/tlgolf/articles/golf-the-hustlers
The stories (good and bad) about your buddy seem endless as his name is a hoyt topic right now.
Russ failed to mention the Whale as one of the reasons he left Detroit.
I'm shocked!
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