2016 TCC

The inaugural Tsunami Cup championship kicked off at the now-defunct Rich Valley Golf Club. Rich Valley (also known as Bitch Valley) was where many of us learned to golf growing up. On the outskirts of Rosemount, MN, Rich Valley was a set of 3 9-hole courses (the red, white, and blue) that was perfect for kids learning the game. While definitely not a tough course, it has a friday rate of buy 9 holes with a cart and get 9 holes for free on fridays. Huge shoutout to the Evenson family for funding god knows how many rounds of mine there. Now a FedEx distribution facility, many good times were had there and I am sure many of my golf balls still exist at the bottom of a few ponds the course had. 

As we were trying to cram as much golf as we could into as little time as possible, we decided we would play 36 holes on Saturday with an individual match play round on Sunday. Because the 8 participants of the 2016 TCC had no idea what a golf Handicap was, we came up with a “qualifying” round at Rich Valley to determine the seeding of the two teams that would play for the Johnny Tsunami’s Cup (no physical cup existed until later, but we will get to that). The friday of the weekend of the TCC (to get the special friday rate) all 8 of us teed off at Rich Valley with the understanding that our scores would seed teams and pick captains for the teams with the lowest 2 scores. 

The inaugural TCC teams were made on an envelope at Rich Valley Golf Club. 

Karlo and Jake were the lowest scores, and as such the captains for the tournament. So we were set. We had our two teams of 8, our tee times, and our format all set. The next day, Saturday Morning, we played a round of Vegas at Emerald Greens golf course in Hastings, MN. Hastings, MN is a bit of a public golf treasure. With a handful of accessible courses  it became the de facto home for the TCC for a couple of years. Team Karlo won both morning matched with Dan and Tyler beating Luke and myself and Karlo and Johno beating Jake and McLey. Then stuff got interesting. 

The afternoon round was played at Hidden Greens in Hastings. The afternoon round was supposed to be a 4-man scramble format. One of our participants, Dan (a proctologist) had a bachelor party to attend that evening and would miss the afternoon round. Team Karlo was down a man so we agreed that they would rotate amongst the three of them an extra shot on every shot to make up for their teammate being missing. During the round, the wind starting picking up. Hidden Greens is set in an oak savannah in Hastings and is a very “woody” course. The old-growth forest was rocking and rolling that afternoon as we took trudged around the course in an effort to try to even the score. The way we had set up the scoring was the Vegas round has 2 matchups worth 2 cup points each, the scramble round worth 4 cup points and then the match play round worth 2 points for a match. We identified the tiebreaker before the friday afternoon round as the captain with the lower score at Rich Valley would win the cup. 

My team of Jake, Luke, Mcley and myself were struggling. Standing on one of the leaf lined fairways, the wind picked up even more. Suddenly we started to hear the unmistakable sound of a tree giving way for us to look up and see an 18 inch wide oak tree falling far too close to us for comfort. Accounts differ on how close this tree came to hitting us, but it was close enough that we were rattled for the rest of the round.

Our group finished first so we waited by the 18th green for the other team to see what score they were at. They had reached the green in regulation and had a 25 foot(ish) putt to put us out of our misery. Conveniently, the player who had the turn to hit twice was the other team’s best player. Karlo hit the first putt that got close but did not fall. Johno and Haynes both missed their putts leaving Karlo’s second chance as their last chance that day to win the cup before the match play round even started. Karlo lines up his uphill putt, having seen the line 3 times before, and the putt tracks directly at the hole. The only thing is the putt was coming in quite hot as Karlo was trying to make sure he got it to the hole. While Jake, Luke, Mcley and I held our breath the ball hits the back of the cup drops and drops into the cup. With an audible gasp heard around the golf course, the golf gods were shining on Team Jake as the ball bounced off the bottom of the cup and popped right out of the hole leaving it on the lip. After almost being hit by a tree and having the cup out of our reach for a brief moment, Team Jake lived to see another day. Full of adrenaline, beers, and good times, we departed back to our respective parent’s houses and rested for our matchplay round the next day. 

The Sunday round was played at The Summit Golf Club in Cannon Falls, MN. Dan, fresh off the bachelor party from the night before, showed up to the course and immediately laid down on the practice green to get some additional rest until our round started. With us being naive as to how match play works, our individual matches were selected without any strokes being given to any of the players. Team Jake couldn’t even use this as an excuse as we were swept by Team Karlo in Matchplay and Team Karlo won the cup. Waiting in the parking lot while saying our goodbyes, we decided to take a picture with the winning team: