Pledge of Allegiance – Mike Roberts

Guest Speaker – Larry Bohannan from the Desert Sun

Roll Call – John Coyle

Absent – John Whitney, Dale Erikson, Dave Levandowski, Stephen Warren

Minutes – Due to an oversight, the minutes from the last meeting were not on our website.  The only significant thing is that we did approve the new bylaws, so those will be up on the website as soon as we can manage it, and without objection they’ll be accepted here.

Treasurer’s Report – Clarke Sharar – Almost $11.000.00 to the SCGA this month.  Current Bank Balance: $12,911.00.  It looks like we’re going to finish off in a positive manner this year. Chris Marshall and Bob Shakespeare did a great job with the Member/Guest tournament this year. For that tournament, Bob’s estimates came very close to the actuals.  Estimated total receipts $21,200.00, actual $21,001.85.  Estimated expenses $23,200.00, actual $22 850.00.  Estimated loss $2,000.00, actual $1664.00

Officers Comments/Reports

President, John Coyle –

• Charity tournament – Those involved (Dan Cameron, Doug Hodson, Ken Dobson, John Coyle).  Efforts continue with the golf cart raffle tickets with proceeds to the First Tee will be drawn on the March 22^nd tournament date.  The event is about half full now.  Information is available in the golf information room.
• Annual Meeting
  • Tuesday, March 17.
  • Guest Speaker will be Pete Donovan from the Desert Sun (formerly the LA Times) will be speaking on the MLB league
  • Continental breakfast with a reservation system like the Welcome Back meeting.  More details will be published on the club website.
  • Club report from John Coyle and Clarke Sharar
  • Recognition of member achievements including Club gross and net champions
  • Install the club officers

Vice President – Ron Hagedorn – N/R

Secretary – Brett Hamilton (standing in for John Whitney) N/R

Club Liaison – Richard Warburton – N/R

Member-at-Large – Bob Shakespeare – N/R

Member-at-Large – Dale Erickson (absent) – N/R

Handicap – Doug Hodson (standing in for Stephen Warren)

We are all supposed to be posting our own scores, including sweeps day.  The only scores you do not post are for legitimate tournaments, like the club championship.  For example, this past sweeps Wednesday, we had 40 people that did not post their scores.  There’s a little issue with some of the Canadians due to the systems not crossing over, so Canadians, please post here in the US on your GHIN number, until they get that resolved in Canada. Please take care and make sure you type in the correct GHIN number (check the name), pick the correct golf club, tee played and the date of the round.  Don’t forget to back date the round if you forget to post on the day you played.  Contact Stephen Warren or Doug Hodson to get any required corrections resolved.  Cards will be randomly checked to help pick up errors and/or omissions.  Bob Shakespeare (future co-chair of the handicap committee) made comment that some folks have inadvertently posted scored to Palm Desert Resort instead of our course.  Again, please be diligent on the accuracy of your posting input.

Membership – Doug Hodson

309 Members including life members, 2 new members.  if you see somebody new out there, introduce yourself and say, “I haven’t seen you around”. Introduce yourself and show that we are a friendly club and we want to be that way.  If there’s anything that I can do to help membership for any questions, be sure to call me or email me.

Tournaments – Chris Marshall

The Member/Guest tournament was quite successful this year.  Especially the horse race portion because we had 42 teams battling it out for four spots.  This was the most we’ve ever had.  Orest Krulach who organized and ran this tournament since its inception will be retiring this year.  He will also be retiring from being the Canadian team captain in the CanAm tournament, a post he has held for 12 of 13 years.  Chris Marshall will be taking over these two positions.

We have a problem in that we seem to only have about 130 of our members typically participate in our tournaments.  That leaves about 170 members that only belong because they can maintain a handicap.  A lot of them don’t even play in our weekly sweeps. John Coyle commented that he agrees that Chris and Bob have made the tournaments fun to attract other members.  Mike Roberts made comment that the participation statistic has historically been the case for the years he was tournament chairman.  Other general discussion ensued with comments from others.  Chris encouraged us to help evolve the tournaments by a focus on having fun as opposed to pure competition.

Upcoming tournaments

• Club Championship – March 4^th, 7^th & 8^th.   There is a red/gold division for gentlemen that only want to play on Wednesday (4^th) and Sunday (8^th).  For either division, the cost of $20.00 per person includes the skins game for all three days and the Sunday meal.  On the entry form, you can specify a preferred partner after which it will be organized by handicap/flight.
• President’s Cup – March 25^th to honor our past presidents.  Organized by computer generated four-man teams playing with a Stableford scoring system.  Two divisions: below 12 or 13 and higher than 13 or 14.  A meal will be included.

Check the website where Dan Cameron and Jim Pollard have done a good job of posting results and pictures of our past tournaments.  We appreciate all their efforts. Bob and I have enjoyed the past couple of years working the tournaments with a theme of having fun, meeting some great people and supporting our community.

Publicity – Dan Cameron

Encourage people that are new in the community to come out and play!  Dan told how that his father-in-law introduced the game to him five years ago.  Reach out to people and inspire them to have fun trying the game.

Care and Compassion – Dave Levandowski (absent) – N/R

Hole in One – Ken Gordon – N/R

SCGA – Stephen Warren (absent) – N/R

Rules – Byron Harvie – N/R

AM Sweeps – Ken Gordon – N/R

PM Sweeps – Vacant – N/R

Canadian Representative – Richard Davidson (absent) – N/R

Webmaster – Jim Pollard (absent) – N/R

Old Business – John Coyle

• 9-hole Wednesday PM group – A possibility is now a probability that a nine-hole group will play on Wednesday afternoons. We’ll wait until we get to about the middle of next month, waiting until the numbers of 18- hole participants go down on Wednesday afternoons.  Bob will take care of it. We envision starting these guys on number one and number 10, a couple of foursomes, maximum of 16, and we’ll offer an opportunity for some of these older guys who only want to play nine holes. And as Joe Dion and Virgil pointed out here a couple of months ago, it won’t be long before all of us are in that category to where nine holes will be enough.
• Election of officers – We only have one candidate for each position.  Our bylaws call for us to ask for nominations from the floor.  George Gamble headed up the nominating committee and read off the following nominations
  • President – John Coyle
  • Vice President – Dan Cameron
  • Secretary – Brett Hamilton
  • Treasurer – Clarke Sharar
  • Club Liaison – Richard Warburton
  • Member at Large – Bob Larsen
  • Member at Large – Rich Davidson

John Coyle called for nominations from the floor.  Hearing none, he asked for a vote of approval from the members that were present.  Vote passed.

New Business – None

Closing Remarks – President – None

Adjournment – President John Coyle adjourned the meeting at 10:04 AM.