THE STATE OF THE IRON THONG

Second report – June 2009

Gang,

I’m glad to report that the state of the Iron Thong is even better than it was last report. Our officers held a meeting on June 11 and discussed a few topics that should interest you. John already sent out a copy of the meeting’s minutes, but I’d like to explain a little bit about what we discussed and what we decided.

Show me the money!

First, financially, the group is doing fine. As of the meeting, there was nearly $2,000 in our kitty. This will be used for the upcoming tournament in September, and for anticipated expenses.

There are still quite a few members who have not paid their $20 dues for this half of the year.  I’m not sure why that is. We’d really prefer everyone pay upfront and not wait until later, but we’re not sure how to convince you to let go of your cash. One of the things we discussed was automatically subtracting your unpaid dues from your winnings each week, but after John feigned having a heart attack, we decided that is just too work-intensive. Besides, you’re all grownups – you shouldn’t need prodding. However, we may return to this idea, perhaps taking dues out of tournament winnings, when the money is bigger and the full $20 could be paid by the winners all at once. Let us know what you think. As for now, the subject was tabled until our next meeting in August.

Ready to party?

We also discussed our upcoming General Membership Meeting, which will be sometime in October, or late September (perhaps in conjunction with the tournament). If you aren’t already aware, our USGA bylaws call for us to have a general membership meeting every year. They suggest having it in October, although that isn’t carved in stone. We’d like to have more than just a meeting – we’d like to hold a social event with food and beverages. Members would be able to bring wife, spouse or significant other. We think we’ll have enough money in the kitty to subsidize part of the cost. We’re considering either a catered dinner, or a barbecue (catered or un-catered). If you have any ideas, let Pete Cliburn know. He’s the committee chairman.

Speaking of committees, Jesse Flores is chairman of the Tournament Committee and he needs a volunteer or two from the group to serve with him. Please give him a call and let him know you’d like to help. Putting on a successful tournament is a lot of work, and the current board and officers will still be working on it, but we’d really like more help. Give us a call!

Membership rules

We touched on a couple of subjects in this category. First, we clarified new members’ eligibility to compete for money on Saturday. Since it takes five rounds to establish a handicap with the Iron Thong, new members with five or less rounds will not be eligible to compete for low net competitions. That includes skins because they’re figured out based on handicap and net scores. A new member can put in $5 for the birdie pool, and pay his $1 to the kitty, but that’s all until that handicap is established. I think this is only fair.

Speaking of new members, we’ve almost hit the “magic 50” number, but we decided that maybe 50 isn’t such a magic number after all. Earlier we had thought about capping our membership at 50 members, but a review of rounds played during the year shows us that we really have about 30-35 active members who show up to play on a regular basis. Because of that, we’re keeping our membership open until we have enough active members to field 8-to-9 foursomes each week. We’re not far from that, but lately we’ve been filling only 5-6 groups, and not all of them have been foursomes.

Minors on Saturday

Once again, the subject of allowing children younger than 18 years of age to either play or ride along with our group came up for discussion.  We’ve talked about this before, and had decided to table it until later, hoping it would go away, I guess. Unfortunately, it won’t go away, so we had to make what is undoubtedly the most difficult decision we’ve made in our short experience as The Iron Thong.

The bottom line is this: having young children (especially young girls) playing and riding with us causes many of our members to be uneasy. This group was initially a bunch of “guys” doing “guy” things – sort of an outlet for macho boasting, teasing and adult language.  We’re much larger now and more diverse, but the whole idea of spending a few hours hooting and hollering seems to be ingrained in our psyche.  We’re at the point now that some of our members have not been playing because they don’t want to share our Saturdays with minors.

To that end, we’re not going to allow anyone younger than age 18 to be part of our group. As you know, we made Alexis Cliburn an Honorary Member, allowing her to play with us. She’s paid her dues and has carded rounds and is eligible for our next tournament. We didn’t think it would be fair to tell her not to play immediately, so this new rule will take affect after our September tournament. Up until that time, members can bring minor children to ride along, and Alexis will continue to play with us.

Pete Cliburn has indicated that Alexis has really enjoyed her time with us, and the competition has made her a better golfer. He says that she needs to compete against her peers and improve her game through lessons and coaching, something she doesn’t get here. I personally will miss her smiling face and smooth swing and the ITG wishes her the best of luck in her golf and school careers. Hopefully, we’ll still be around when she turns 18, and she might want to play again with a bunch of old macho men.

Nice try, web guy

Not long ago, John changed the format for keeping track of handicap statistics on the webpage. It was a good idea, but we discovered that it doesn’t identify which 10 of the last 20 scores are actually being used to determine the handicap. The old format did, so John’s going back to it.

The end

That’s about all. Before I shut up here, I’d like to ask you to take the latest poll on our webpage. It’s about our online newsletter, The Thong Adjuster. You may know that I put this together monthly, and have for the last couple of years. But I haven’t gotten much feedback as to whether you guys read it or not, or would like changes made. So take the poll and let me know.

Our officers and board will meet again in August. I’ll send out another report to you then.

Steve