It’s no big secret that the economy is in bad shape. That being said, the Stark County Amateur Golf Association is trying its best to keep competitive golf in Stark and surrounding counties alive and well. And to that end, we’ve made some changes for 2009.
First, taking everything in consideration, we decided to drop our annual membership fee this year and just have an entry fee for each event.
Our first event at Zoar Village GC is a 2-man scramble: a $35 entry fee per player plus greens fees and optional skins of $15 flight skins and $5 big skins.
Our next event will be an Individual Medal Play at Sable Creek in Hartville. That event will have a reduced entry of $25 plus optional skins of $20 flight and $5 big skins. We’re getting a rate of $23 for 18 w/cart on the Maroon and Black nines. We’re trying something different by teeing it up at noon. Ray Hadley gave us a nice break in the price to get us to come out. It will be interesting to see how these first two events fill out.
The scramble at Zoar has always been one of our bigger field events, so I expect we will get a full field this year for the first event. The schedule looks vastly different from what we’ve had in the past.
We are hoping to have ‘addition by subtraction’ at Tam O’Shanter by dropping it down to a one day event. It’s just getting harder and harder for everybody to give up their whole weekend for a two-day event.
We’re hoping that everyone saves their money for the Stark County Amateur, which looks to be the toughest amateur we’ve had in years. Again we will probably be making some changes there as well. We’re thinking of bumping the cut to the top 20 or 24 this year. The Sanctuary has given us a very good rate for those that make the cut. I think it was $32 for 18 w/cart for the final round.
I tried my best to get some good deals on golf this year. Hopefully we’ll make the best of whatever this year brings!
— Jeff Barbas
