2017 TCC

With the 2016 TCC a success, we reached out to see if we could grow the number of players for the 2017 addition. Moving to 12 players for 2016, we saw McLey take a year off and we added 5 new players to the rotation. Instead of the friday round at Rich Valley seeding the teams, we decided to keep with the same captains and created a new rule that captains would serve a 3-year period. This would allow for the captains matches in the cup to be settled in a 2-1 fashion or a 3-0 fashion if they really dominated. Karlo and Jake accepted their roles and we played a round at Rich Valley that would then allow for the captains to be informed on the state of the games of each participant. After playing the round, the teams were selected via a snake draft prior to departing Rich Valley for the evening. 

Returning to Emerald Greens, which can modestly be referred to as a goat track back then, we played our Saturday morning round of Vegas with Team Karlo taking 2 of the 3 matchups. With 2 points per matchup, that put team Karlo up 4-2 heading into the afternoon two-man scramble round. With no bachelor party commitments, we headed into Saturday’s afternoon round back at Hidden Greens with a two-man scramble format with each match up worth 2 points. This time around the only way the cup could be decided before the matchplay round was for Team Karlo to win all of the matches on Saturday as he only needed 12 of the 24 available cup points to retain the cup. The afternoon scramble round did not yield any near death experiences, and Team Karlo won 2 out of the 3 matches. Team Jake, heading into Sunday’s match play round being down 4-8, needed a miracle to wrestle control of the cup away from Team Karlo. Team Karlo just had to win 4 cup points on Sunday to retain control of the cup. That could have come from halving 4 matches, winning 1 and halving 2, or winning 2 matches. 

After all of us getting our teeth kicked in at the Summit the year before, we decided relocate our match play round to Bellwood Oaks. Bellwood Oaks actually shares a property boundary with Hidden Greens, but they were very different courses. While Hidden Greens relied on the oaks to keep players accountable, Bellwood Oaks is a much more friendly layout with not nearly as much trees lining the fairways. Personally, Bellwood Oaks is my favorite course of the Hastings triumvirate. Again, not understanding how golf matches actually worked, no strokes were given for any of the matches in this cup. 

Captain Jake must have given his team a Herb Brooks level speech before the round because Team Jake ended up winning 4 of the 6 matches and halving one. When all was said and done, Team Jake got to take the cup away from Team Karlo that year, setting the table for a rubber match in their captain’s match in 2018.