2018 TCC

The year with the asterisk. This year we finally all got wise to the fact that golf matches are handicapped for a reason. But that didn’t stop us from screwing this one up a little. We had some scheduling issues with a couple of the players this year which led to us having to bring in an alternate for the matchplay round. While Hutton would play all day with us on Saturday, he would not be able to play on Sunday, so we brought in another Karlo to play in his place. More to come on that issue later. 

Prior to the TCC commencing, I walked down to a trophy store in Madison, WI while on my lunch break. Peaking my head into the store, it looked like the store hadnt seem much business in years. Samples covered in dust awaited me when a man stepped behind the counter asking if he could help me. I told him I wanted a cup for an annual golf tournament made up with the ability to engrave the captain’s name on the side of a wooden pedestal. Wasting no time, he told me to come back after work and pick it up. I gave him the spelling the names to be engraved on the cup, and walked back up State street to go back to my soul sucking job, with a little additional spring in my step. When I came back after work to pick up the cup, the artist showed me the cup, which was great. I gladly settled up with him and as he handed me the cup he told me, “under no circumstances, should this cup be drank from.” I logged that one away to let everybody know. We had a cup! 

No friday round was established, although records show that some may have played a warm up social round on friday at Rich Valley that was not intended to impact teams for this year’s version of the cup. Teams were selected from 12/13 players prior to the cup beginning on Saturday morning back at Emerald Greens.

This year, the focus was on playing with as many different partners as possible as in the years prior, we found ourselves riding in the cart with the same people for every round. So Saturday’s morning round was elected to be 6 9-hole two-man scramble matches with us switching up partners at the turn and heading back out on to the back 9. Each 9-hole macthj would be worth 1 point. Unfortunately, this set up ended up being more than we could handle. Pace of play at the TCC has always been a concern of mine and this year it really came to a head.

Emerald Greens has 2 18-hole courses, and the wise pro decided to hold an event that locked down one of the courses for the entire day on Saturday. With a packed tee sheet on the course in which we were playing, we began to run into pace of play issues. This caused us to audible and remain with our existing two-man scramble teams for the back 9. After the saturday morning round, Team Jake found themselves up 4-2. 

Between the rounds we were able to grab a burger at one of the best burger joints in the world, King’s Place in nearby Miesville, the home of the town-ball team the Mudhens. We all sat down and had a great lunch together before heading to our afternoon Vegas round. Preferring the more favorable layout of Bellwood Oaks to Hidden Greens, we chose Bellwood Oaks as our Saturday afternoon Vegas round. 

Team Jake stayed hot, even after a heavy lunch, and won 2 out of the three matches, each worth 2 cup points. My memories of that round include my playing partner, Johno’s brother Jason, sitting in the fairway on the 3rd hole with a force carry of 150ish yards over water to the green. Jason decided to pull out his best Kevin Costner and went for the green 3-4 times with a pitching wedge assuring me each time that he could get it there. Sorry to do you dirty like that Jason. 

Heading into our matchplay round, Team Jake was up 8-4 on Team Karlo. We relocated our match play round to a course more of us were familiar with, Crystal Lake Golf Course, in Lakeville, MN. With none of having handicaps, we used the scores from the round at Bellwood Oaks to allot strokes for our match play round. Assuming that Hutton’s performance was equal with that of his sub, Tony Karlovich, we allotted Tony the same amount of strokes we would have given Hutton. Matchups were set and we were off. 

Tony, playing against his brother, went out and shot an 89 while Hutton shot 103 the day before. This led to Tony kicking his brother’s ass, even though the original Karlo shot a 75 on the day. Big egg on our face for this one. In a round that included our high school gym teacher selling us shots of tequila mid round, Team Jake continued their match play dominance winning 5 of the 6 matches. Team Jake not only retained the cup, they blew the doors off of Team Karlo and ended up winning 18-6 for the cup. With this being the final captain’s matchup between Karlo and Jake, Jake took home the captain’s match 2-1 after losing in 2016. 

Missing from the picture is Tony Karolvich/Chris Hutton

*This year started the tradition of the winners posing with the cup on the bed of a pick up truck. None of the players owned this truck and from this day on we always pick a random truck in the parking lot of the matchplay course to take the picture by. 

This was the year where I felt like we started to find our footing with the TCC. We required new captains for the next 3-year period and we selected Dan (the proctologist) and Luke (the controller). The next 3-year period would really start to build an identity for the TCC.