2015 Old Dog's Revenge

Old Dogs Revenge

The 3rd Annual Cider Cup was played with great weather and anticipation as both teams owned victories and this would prove as the "rubber match" in this event.

The Old Guys had waited all year to avenge last year's narrow defeat, but none more than Captain Sparks who had awoken several times from his hibernation only to see visions of EL DIABLO coming back from 2 down with 2 to play and steal the match on Sunday afternoon.

Every year it seems that the Old Guys have issues with organization, team structure, etc. We've had no uniforms, “Homeless” Dave McIlvain, issues with Red Stag, refusal for all members to purchase jackets and this year was no different. As both teams readied for the event and team pictures, "Homeless" Dave was nowhere to be found. This seemed to affect Gary Varner more than most, but nonetheless was a bit unsettling for all. After a few minutes, Dave showed up and we were off. One more thing to mention regarding wardrobe....Hank Whalen was wearing bright red pants to match the bright red team jackets and after the matches were over the seat of his pants being red wound up being a omen of things to come.

In the Best Ball Format, the Young Guys got on the board 1st as Whalen/Gossett bested Lenox/Marshall and it was quickly 1 zip. Letcher/C.Bishop halved with Kendall/Box and after Varner/Turner fell to J.Henson/B.Bishop the young guns were up 2 1/2 to 1/2. Right then and there the Old Guys could've given up and gone home to their mommies like Shearl Moore did after shooting a 95 in the 1st day of this year's Joe Mooney Invitational never to be heard from again......but that didn't happen. The crusty old geezers manned up with McIlvain/Cox, Kennedy/Biancke, F.Henson/Sparks all getting full points to put their team in the lead 3 1/2 to 2 1/2 and when rookie Kelvin Winkle and his partner Brian Kinsey halved with Ammerman/McCauley, the morning sessions ended with the old guys on top 4 - 3. On a side note, when the team of Frank Henson/Ray Sparks defeated Bill Meeks/Rob Ogden in the 6th match of the Cup, it gave the old guys a lead that they would never relinquish. Can you say that Henson/Sparks won it for the team? No, but I would like to say that the slaying of the great EL DIABLO lost it for his team. This will be debated for years between Rob and Joseph, but the fact remains....Rob lost the match that put his team down and they would never recover.

The afternoon matches were a new Chapman Alternate Shot format that frankly had me concerned as I watched Joseph Ammerman play flawlessly and kept putting Joe Henson in great shape as they blitzed myself and Frank. While Frank sipped on his Apple Bourbon, we went to see how the other matches were going. We just had a feeling that we would not do well as a group in this format so it was an unexpected surprise to see that we had won this session as well by a score of 4-3, giving us an 8-6 lead after Day 1.

Another 1st for this year's event was the Cider Cup Gala held at the Prizing House. Players, wives, girlfriends and an auctioneer all had a great time as this added feature really put the day over the top. In what would become a "clean sweep", the Old Guys wives helped us to a win on the putting event allowing us to be served our meal first, then our auction items narrowly generated more money than the young guys (thanks to Joseph and his Harrison County math skills) which gave us an advantage in the Sunday morning scrambles pairings. Again, a great night especially with the auction which I will mention more about later. But onto the golf!

Sunday morning started with the Scramble and again beautiful weather. The Young Guns had traditionally owned this portion of the event with a 7-2-1 record in the first two years. In this years titanic struggle, they once again started strong with a win by J.Henson/B.Bishop and halves by Whalen/Thornton and Letcher/C.Bishop. But the geezers rallied with wins by Kennedy/Marshall, Henson/Box and Sparks/Cox to win the session 4-3. It should be noted here that Assistant Captain (Ass Cap), Frank Henson had tremendous input with these pairings as he persuaded Captain Sparks to shake up 5 of the 7 pairings he was originally going to go with. This resulted in all 5 of those new pairings to either win or halve their matches. The pairing of Lenox/Biancke gave us the "Putt heard round the world" as Charlie poured in a 35 footer for eagle on the 9th hole to demoralize the team of Whalen/Thornton. If there was any notion of a young guns rally it seemed to end right there. So with only the singles left, the score stood 12-9 Old Guys.

The singles matches have been dominated by the Geezers as they came into this year's tournament with a record of 13-6-1. After the dust settled, they now own a record of 21-9-4 as they pummeled the Youngsters 8-3-3 this year. I won't go into the details, but remember when I spoke of Hank's bright red pants? Well, after Lenox was thru with him in the Sunday Singles let's just say his buttocks matched the color of those pants. In what was an extremely humbling moment, Stephen McCauley and his group introduced the Ray Sparks Award at the Gala that goes to the players that score the most points on the winning team. That award will go to David McIlvain, Terry Box and Charlie Biancke as they each garnered 3.5 points for the winners. I'd be remiss though if I didn't mention the fact that for the first time in Cider Cup history we had 2 golfers score a perfect 4 points by winning all 4 of their matches. Those two players were Joe Henson and Blake Bishop.

With the final score of the 2015 Cider Cup being 21.5 to 13.5, you would think that the old guys were clear winners and with respect to the tournament, you would be right. But in fact there were several winners. The Cynthiana Country Club, The Prizing House, all of the players, spouses and friends, all of you that donated auction items or bid on them, all of you that donated money out of your pocket, those that did things behind the scenes to make this event the most fun thing we do all year on the golf course and most importantly in the grand scheme of things was the Ratliff family. I can't tell you how proud Stephen and I felt to be associated with this event and with all of you when we handed the family $6465.00 together this past Thursday afternoon. The amount blew us all away. Who would've thought that a little game where we smack a little ball around could make such an impact on so many people? Even as I write this I have a lump in my throat. What a great game and what a great bunch of friends all of you are to me.

Already looking forward to 2016!!