LWGA Newsletter Volume 20 Issue 1 Spring 2017 FROM THE PRESIDENT Greetings from your President: Our year is off and running and we are loving this wonderful spring weather.if only it could last forever. Our annual meeting/breakfast was a huge success thanks to the organizing and planning of Mary Jones, LWGA Social Chair. A large crowd enjoyed the lovely breakfast at Belfair Golf Club followed by an excellent program. We enjoyed the candid interview with Heidi Tennyson-Wright, Director of Golf at Moss Creek, conducted by Jim Swift, Director of Golf at Belfair. And it is always a pleasure to present checks to our two scholarship recipients and hear about their accomplishments. The LWGA Board is already hard at work on the day-to-day operations of the organization. Our top priority this year is to complete the Going Green project. The first step was to redesign the website which has been accomplished. I hope you have had an opportunity to peruse it thoroughly and have made it one of your favorites'. You will find the tournament schedule, entry forms, tee times and results on the website. The next step is the completion of the Online Registration and Membership Renewal section of the website which we hope will be ready by the fall. Once you have created your own account, which will be done club-by-club over the next few months, you will be ready to register for tournaments online and renew your membership on line. It will be your responsibility to keep your personal information updated within your personal profile. Our Club Reps will be trained in the registration process and will be available to help members as needed. We owe a huge thank you to Nancy Sain, Jan Alpert, Chris Putnam and Kathy LaBonte who have spent many hours, with even more to come, to make this online transition happen. The tournament year started with the cancellation of the annual Harbor Town event but the club worked with our chair to provide those signed up for the tournament the ability to play on another winter day. The Pro Appreciation tournament at Long Cove was full and the feedback from the Club Pros was excellent. Eagles Pointe, Moss Creek and Haig Point were all well attended. We have a great schedule lined up for the remainder of the year thanks to our Tournament Administrator, Susan Foster and Tournament Chair, Chris Putnam. I m already enjoying my return (recycling) to the presidency of LWGA and I m excited about the advancements we are making this year. I have an outstanding board of talented women to work with me which makes my job much easier. I hope you will contact me or any of the board members when you have feedback or concerns.
Have a wonderful golfing season. We have two new venues on the schedule this year, Parris Island and Heron Point and I hope I will see you there. Hit em straight, long and seldom!! June Somers President junesomers@roadrunner.com TOURNAMENTS This has been an interesting year for our tournament program. The first tournament of the year, Harbour Town, was canceled due to extreme cold. The good news was the participants were able to play the course at a later time and bring a guest for a VERY reduced price. Our second tournament, our Pro-Appreciation event held at Long Cove, was a tremendous success. Many of the players took the opportunity to socialize with their pro s following the event. It sure looked like they were all enjoying themselves. Our third tournament was held at Eagles Pointe. We managed to survive a scoring problem with the Tournament Pairing Program, Jan Alpert former Tournament Chairman, jumped in to help hand score the tournament and we were able to identify and award the winners in a timely manner. Moss Creek was our fourth tournament and everyone enjoyed a beautiful day on the links. All of these tournaments were oversubscribed. Our fifth tournament was held at Haig Point in slightly inclement weather. Even through the rain dampened our clothes and clubs, it did not dampen our spirits. We had quite a lively boat ride back. On another note, I want to take the opportunity to remind you that you only need to put your gross score(s) on the score card and make sure every hole has a valid score (not an X) which means if you pick-up use your maximum score allowed. You also need to write legibly. Our computer program does a very good job calculating both gross and net totals but you can do it as a verification for us. Once the tournament is finished, we send ALL scores to GHIN so there is no need for you to enter your score. Most but not all scores are entered as Tournament scores. As for entry fees, those of you who belong to a Brown facility need to pay only the prize and bag handler fee (usually $12.00). Incorrect checks make it more difficult to balance the tournament accounting. The schedule, entry forms, tee times and results can all be found on our new website. If you are experiencing any problems with the site, let Nancy Sain or me know.
Lastly, I want to thank Anne Reed and Jan Alpert for their assistance in running each tournament and those of you who helped on the fly with tournament tasks. Tournaments do not run without the help of our members. Chris Putnam Tournament Chairman ceputnam1@gmail.com MAKE PLANS FOR YOUR 2017 TOURNAMENTS GETAWAY The Get Away has 96 players and a wait list of 5 teams this year. We are very pleased it filled up so quickly and are looking forward to another year of fun and camaraderie. In addition to planning this year s event, we are busy looking at venues for 2018. Since this event has grown in popularity over the years, the board has decided to pick the very best 3 locations that can accommodate our numbers, and rotate them from year to year. So far, we have Amelia Island and Ponte Vedra as two of the three. We are very close to securing another fabulous venue and will announce that in our next newsletter. Stay tuned! Susie Sutton and Lori Witz (Chairs) SSutton57@gmail.com Witzend97@hargray.com
MEMBERSHIP Our April enrollment is now complete. I am pleased to welcome 16 new members to our LWGA family. New Members are: Club Bear Creek Member Cynthia Kosty Club Haig Point Member Ghislaine Belcak Becky Peterson Jan Zembrodt Country Club of Hilton Head Teckla Meister Janice Nesmith Long Cove Elaine Laux Dolphin Head Catherine Curran Sea Pines Mary Hurley Golf Club at Indigo Run Deborah Altman Marcia Murphy Bridget Onda Sun City Jackie Currier Jayne Mailfold Deb Walsh Hampton Hall Deb Kermisch LWGA now has a total of 304 members. We encourage all members to become familiar with our ByLaws and Standing Rules. These documents can be found on our website lwgahhi.com under the About Us tab, so please take some time to read this important information about membership and tournaments. The answers to most questions can be found in these documents. We are currently in the process of getting our members to set up their accounts on our new website. We are doing this club by club and have divided up the groups by week so that we can handle the influx of requests. This process will be done by the middle of June. We are making progress so please be patient as new software is not always perfect. Once the software is up and running, everyone will be able to make corrections to their own address, phone number, email address, etc. ensuring that we always have the correct information on the website. We will keep you updated as we continue to make this transition from paper to digital. Kathy LaBonte Membership Chair Labonte7479@roadrunner.com
COMMUNICATIONS This has been a busy and exciting year with migrating to our new website. We have received excellent support from Blue Tone Media. They have designed a site that is much easier for your board members to use and keep the tournament data current. Tournament schedules, tee times, pictures, and results can all be posted online without sending files in email and waiting for an administrator to load them. Some of you may be wondering about the online registration piece we spoke about at the January meeting. The USGA has been migrating from the TPP tool to Golf Genius. We started our migration just as this was also starting. We are waiting for a new interface to the tournament portion of Golf Genius in order to start making online registration for tournaments a reality. At this point we do not have a firm date but, we expect the online registration to be before the end of the year. Please do not confuse this with the membership info registration we are currently doing. The account registration on the current site will only allow you to update your personal info and see the info of others. It is much like the membership portion of our book we printed in the past. This is a one time process of mapping accounts with member info in the database. Its been slow using voluntary time from me and Kathy LaBonte. Please be patient. We are working our way through getting you set up. Remember you can enter tournaments, see tee times, newsletters, pictures, and results without a login. This was by design so you could function while we enhance and load other functionality. The sixteen new members have been added to our email tool, Constant Contact. If you have an email change please, inform me or Kathy LaBonte. Please remember that email we send in bulk may be blocked as spam by your email provider. You may also find our emails in your spam or junk folder. Its best to plan your participation in our events in your calendars and make note of when entries are due. The emails are only intended to be reminders. Please utilize your club reps for questions and refer to our standing rules and by-laws. Nancy Sain Communications Chair genesain@roadrunner.com FLIGHT WINNERS FROM THE MATCH PLAY CHAMPIONSHIP SEE PICTURES ON NEXT PAGES
First Flight Renne Rezzatano & Terrie Allemang
CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL FLIGHT WINNERS! Second Flight Lori Witz and Lori Delaney
Third Flight Cathy Sigler & Casey Vanderveer and June Somers & Kate Warr
Fourth Flight Gerri Albert & Chris Putnam