Ep 8 - The US Am Tour: Competitive Golf for Every Handicap

It's one thing to keep in mind that it's a national tour. It's a national organization that has chapters all across the country. The local chapter here in in Albany is we try to keep everything within, say, an hour ride. Probably the longest one away that we've ever had was turning stone. And that's like an hour and 40 minutes from Albany. And it's for amateur players. And everybody says to me, the first thing they say is, I'm not good enough to play amateur golf, but you are. I have a 20 handicap. I have won tournaments with a 99, a 97. If you can hit in the 90s or even a hundred, trust me, you can play in this tour. It's it's really fun.

It's comprised of six different flights. I say I'm a 20 handicap and I hit a 99. There is another flight that goes from like a 20 handicap to a 16 and a 16 to a 12 and a 12 to an I think it's a 12 to an eight and then an eight to a six. And then there's a championship flight, which are scratch golfers. So regardless of how good you are, there's a place for you in the US amateur. And I can't tell you enough if you enjoy playing competitive golf, you got to give it a try because I joined another tour a few years back and I went through the same thing. My buddy texted me, said, hey, did you see this online?

This tour, starting a golf tour, amateur tour. And I'm like, I'm not good enough to play in. You got to be kidding me. I'm not going to I'm not going to waste my money and do that. And it was like finally he talked me into doing it. I put up the money. I you have to register first. It cost like 100 bucks to register or something in that range, and then you pay for a specific tournament and you go play it.

And the very first tournament I played was at Saratoga Spa. And one of the I'm telling this story because there's an important spot in here. I went out in the front nine, and at that time I had like a 17, 16, 17 handicap. I go out on a front and I hit a 48 and I am totally upset. I'm like, look, you got me involved in this and I'm out here playing like crap. I said, I knew I shouldn't, and he says to me and he picks up his phone and he looks at his phone and he says, did you look at the score? And I said, what the heck are you talking about? The score. He says, they have online scoring.

And I'm like, what are you talking about? He pulls up his phone and somebody in your group puts the scores in after every hole. And I'm looking at this and he says, you're in second place out of six guys. And I said, you got to be kidding me with a 48. And and it was like, really? I got a chance here. So I played the second half. I played the back nine. I was lucky I buckled down, I hit a 40 on the back nine. I ended up with an 88. And I did win the very first tournament I ever played in and that was it. I was hooked. I and and the best part to tell anybody that's never played in these is when you start playing, it's like a I'm just going to play again.

But once you start playing in your head, it's like, I want to play better. I want to do a little more. I think I'm going to hit the range. I think I'm going to work on my swing, I think, and I never did that in the past. I played in loops. I played in leagues my entire life, and you just go out and hack the ball around. You really don't care if you play well, you don't play well. It doesn't really matter. Sometimes you're in a match in a league and you have fun with it. But when you play this competitive style golf, it just changes your whole attitude about golf. And I can't I can't tell you enough to just give it a try because it's it's a lot of fun.

And the other benefits of this is there's six flights. Like I mentioned, the winner of each flight gets a trophy. And depending on how many people are in the flight, you actually win gift cards. The first place is like up to I think it's six players. They pay for one spot between 6 and 10 players. They play two spots and it continues up the ladder. I'm doing a tournament next weekend at turning Stone. I have 115 guys signed up for this thing, and there's a few flights that I'm actually paying for spots. They have like 18 guys in a flight and we pay out for spots there. And and again, the winner of the flight gets a trophy. And another caveat with this particular tour is that they have a regular tour and a senior tour combined together within the six flights.

And our flights are labeled by professional golfers. For instance, there's a tag or flight, there's a Jones flight, a Palmer flight, a Hogan flight, a player flight, and a championship flight. Well, in amongst each one of those flights is there is a tag or flight, and there's a senior Tiger flight, and there's a Jones flight and a senior tone of Jones flight. And if you're over 50 years old, you can play in the senior division. Now, that being said, if we don't have enough players within a division, the seniors and the regulars in that particular flight play together. But like I just said, next week I have 115 guys in a tournament. I have senior flights and regular flights in all six.

I actually have 12 different flights going on next week and I don't want to mislead you. We don't have 115 guys every weekend. We have one this weekend at Freer Park in Troy and we have 16 guys at it. And in this particular case, obviously the seniors are playing with the regular flight guys, but it's spread up into I think I think we have three flights going this weekend, and I can't tell you how much fun it is in.

I'm trying to remember if there's anything else that I might have missed as far as the benefits of playing well, one other thing I mentioned how this is a national organization with chapters all across the country. When I started playing in that other tour, I started doing some regional, regional tournaments. Like they said, they have two day regionals all across the country. I've been able to play inhis rook Copperhead. I played Harbor Town with the big lighthouse. I played Scottsdale, Arizona, I played Paynes Valley, I played all over the country. And it wasn't just going out and playing. I was playing in a tournament and a few of them. I actually picked up a skin in one and I made like 140 bucks in that one.

And they have side games. They have skins going on besides the regular tournament where you get a gift card for the win and I just you can play all say, for instance, you're going on vacation, you and the family is going to Florida, you and the families got relatives in Michigan or somewhere else. If you're going out that way. Take your clubs with you. I guarantee you you could find yourself a tournament somewhere because there's I think there's 65 or 75, I'm not sure. Chapters all across the country and it's all online, you know, it's it's a great organization to get involved with. It's a lot of fun. I just can't tell people how excited I am about the whole tour in itself.

Do you want to touch on real quick about what the tour, your individual tournament fees include? The tournament fees include online scoring and obviously to start with it. It includes the golf, the cart, range, balls if they have a range. And by the way, if anybody's listening to this and you are coming to Freer Park, they do not have a range. So there aren't any range balls involved in that one. But they have practice greens and chipping greens and, you know, that kind of stuff. But there is no but it normally includes range balls and it includes prize money. It includes the trophies. It includes online scoring, the whole organization of putting the tournaments together and everything else. There is a director fee that I get for holding me.

I'm not going to blow smoke up anybody's. But here I do get paid to do this. I don't get paid a lot, but it makes it worth doing it. And there's a lot of what am I trying to think of? There's a lot of technical stuff that goes into managing the. The handicaps. It's not easy to do, and we try to regulate them as best we can with the national organization. They keep track of them pretty close. If you're handicap moves down to the point where all of a sudden you're you're say you. I mentioned a tag tiger flight. That is the lowest flight. That's the one I play in with a 20 handicap.

If my handicap happened to slip down to like a 19.9 or 19.8, I would probably get moved up to the next class, which is a Jones flight. So depending on how good you're playing and once you start playing, you feel you can play better and you'll end up getting moved up a flight or two. And by the same token, if you do, if you're in one of the medium flights at a 16 handicap and you play three or more tournaments and you're not playing well anymore, you can go back down to class.

That all has to be regulated by the national organization. I always call it by corporate. But you know, any anybody that knows what I'm talking about, it's an organization and they are well organized and they keep track of a lot of the handicap systems and keep track of the courses. They have all the slopes, the ratings. I tell these guys all the time, you have no idea how much time I spend making sure that everything is where it should be.

And, and of course is go off or the tournaments go off without a hitch. And we've done several tournaments with Don. And I will say that Don does a wonderful job of keeping them organized and keeping the pace of play. I know that is something that's super important. Yeah, they they really, really push for the pace of play. I actually don't play and most of my tournaments, if I have like less than ten people, sometimes I might squeeze in around. But we're playing Sunday at Fair Park and there's 16 people playing, so I'm not even going to play. But what I will do you doing is I'll be in a cart, driving around the course, making sure the guys are keeping up with the people in front of them.

One of the unique things they have, we print up the scorecards for each each tournament we have, and the scorecards actually have a time on the card when you should be approaching or when you finish the whole. So they have if you started at 10:00, excuse me. If you start at 10:00, they have a 1015 number. And that's when you should be done with the first hole, or 1022 for the second hole, or 1035 for the third hole, and so on and forth.

So when you're looking at the scorecards and you see, geez, I'm on the seventh hole, we're supposed to be done with this hole by 320. And you look down in its 325, okay, we're five minutes behind, but it's not a big deal. But if you look down in your 25 minutes behind, then we got an issue. And it's important that you stay on time because nobody wants to go out there and play a six hour round or a five hour round.

And to be honest with you, so far this year we've done pretty good. We've usually got in and I think the longest round we had was like four hours and 40 minutes. But we try to keep it, you know, for 24.5 and it makes it more fun. There's nothing worse than playing. I played one one time up in turning Stone and literally it was the worst round of golf. I after after it was there. I'm on the 10th hole. It was three hours and ten minutes and I looked at the guys I was playing with. I said, you got to be kidding me. And literally it was a six hour round and it was just horrible. And you're waiting on every shot and granite it there was carts only, but you can see people in front of you parking their cart on the car paths, walking all the way across and scoping the hole, then walking all the way back and getting the club and walking all.

And it just drove us crazy. But this is one of the things that we really try to regulate is keeping the keeping the pace as moderate as we can. We're not trying to push anybody but 4.5 hours. There's plenty of time to get 18 holes in. So all of this that you're organizing and having people play leads to something towards the end of the year. What is that? Yes, absolutely. When not only do you award prize money, but everyone that competes in any tournament gets points that go towards the year end. I forget to call order of Order of Merit. Order of Merit. I think it's called to where if you finished first in your flight at the end of the season, your registration fee for the following season is paid for.

If and you can qualify for a national tournament, which comes at the end of the year. And our season ends in September when they have the national tournament and the national tournament. This year is in a really, really nice resort out in Oregon, and it's a four day tournament for the seniors, and I don't have the dates in front of me right now. And then there's a four day tournament the following week for the regulars, and it's it's a great thing to do and you have to qualify for it. And to be honest with you, the qualification is basically you have to play in six tournaments throughout the year. The leaders, I think it's the leader of each flight, gets an automatically qualified.

But to be honest with you, once they open the doors after that, they take I don't even know it's 240 guys or something like that. It's a ridiculous amount of people. So if you if you really wanted to play in one and you had your six rounds in, the chances are really good you're going to be able to play in the national tournament if you want. Yeah they have and the the points go towards the Order of Merit for your local tour. And it also goes for the National. They have a national Order of Merit. And to be honest with you, I'm not sure what the prize is for the National Order of Merit. If you finished first in the country for your I do know one of the prizes just because I looked it up online.

Not that I'm ever going to get close. Just so you guys at home know for the National Order of Merit, the way they work, it is very similar to the Official World Golf Rankings or like the Fedex Cup points. So you're incentivized to play as often as you can. They want to see guys out there. Obviously it benefits everybody because the pools are deeper, the competition stiffer, so on and so forth. So the more tournaments you play in, the more points you're going to accumulate, because you literally can't walk away from a tournament with zero points, even if you finished in last place. The more guys that are there, the higher number of points you you stand a chance of getting, so incentivizes you to play a lot in the center of you to to finish well.

So you know, you see the competitions there. And if you finish really high in a in a deep pool, you're going to get a lot of points. So it works very similar to the Fedex Cup standings where you know, if you want to, you know, be at the end of the year, I should say like they used to do the Fedex Cup points standings, where you'd get a kind of a jump on the field, kind of that type of thing. But this gives you a jump towards admittance into national championships. I do know one of the benefits of being National Order of Merit champion in a flight is that you get automatic entry into the following year's national championships and exemption into it. The fees aren't free, but you know you get an automatic entry to it. You don't have to qualify the following year as long as you play the, you know, minimum number of tournaments you can get in the following year for free or not for free, but, you know, without without having to get a certain number.

So thing to keep in mind is many of you may be watching from outside of the Albany, New York area. And if you are, go to the US amateur website and look for your region, look by state and then kind of find the city that is closest to you that's under that state. Some states have several different regional areas. Some have like I think North Carolina and South Carolina are actually combined, which I was surprised to see that considering how big they are. So yeah, if you're interested in doing the tour and you're not in the Albany area, make sure you go to the website and see what's there. But if you are in this area, I know Don has sent us that.

He would love to talk to people and educate them on what the tour is like and get more people to sign up. And so we'll have a link to the US amateur site in the description, but also specifically to the Albany region and a way to get Ahold of Don. If you're interested in signing up for our area, one of the one of the other things that I want to mention, you speaking, you're speaking of signing up.

Well, immediately people say, well, if I sign up right now, there's not too many weeks left before September. But one thing you should know is that the registration fee that you pay to sign up is good for 12 months, not just till the end of the season. So if you signed up today, it would be good until July of next year, July 8th or whatever today is. I don't know what the date is right now, but for 12 months. So that means that you could play in tournaments next year, next spring, in April, May, June, right up to July, again without having to put up any registration fee. Again. That's one of the things that I really liked about this tour. I played. Any other tours when they have their national championship, that's the end of the season, and then right after that, you have to sign up again so that if you're in a situation like we are right now, where I believe I only have four tournaments left this year, I think we've had 5 or 6.

I can't remember exactly, but there's only four left for this year. But the good news is, not only is there just four left this year, we have the national championship in September. Then we're going to try to have two or maybe three tournaments in October, weather, weather permitting. Obviously we can't. We're not going to be out there in the snow or the rain or, you know, when it's really cold out.

But last year I remember playing in November, so the weather held out and we got a lot of a lot of golfing so that you might you and and if you start again in October, if we have a couple tournaments in October that counts towards next year, next summer. So it kind of bridges the gap. And not only that, but if you played in 1 or 2 tournaments in October and then you decided, geez, I'm going to Florida in April or I'm going to Florida in January, you look up, it's got to I think there's 4 or 5 different flight or different tours in Florida.

It's like the northern end. I think they call it the Gulf Coast. Then there's one down there in Miami, there's one near Orlando, there's one near Tampa, there's one up in Jacksonville. I don't even know how many there is. But if you went down that way, I guarantee you you could find a tour at least one tournament, if not more, that you could play in down there. And that counts towards your local points. So that, like Brett mentioned earlier, you could get a jump on everybody else. I did one year and I won in that other tour that I played, and I did win the championship at the end of the year because I went to Florida like three times. I think they'll only allow you to do for outside of your region, if I'm not mistaken, to count towards your Order of Merit, but that's a big jump on everybody else.

Trust me, I actually I went down in April in the US Am tour here and I played in Destin, Florida and it's at the Sanderson Resort. It was a gorgeous it's I've been there two years in a row now. And it's funny because last year I was in the same class as I am this year, the same 20 and up, and I hit a 99 and I finished fifth. I went back this year, I hit the same 99 and I actually won my division. I was shocked, I picked up $140 for the win and I looked at the the guys. That was funny because I turned around and say, man, you guys stink because I'm out here golfing the 99 and I'm winning with a 99. This is this is ridiculous.

But that's all part of the game. And again, it's not so much how bad you're playing or how good you're playing. It's how everybody else is doing. Well, obviously the course was playing tough that day because I won with a 99, whereas the year before I hit a 99 and I finished fifth. So but it's it's just a lot of fun. And to me, the most interesting part is that online scoring and you can follow along, you can see if you're doing well. I try never to look because I kind of know when I'm playing, if I'm playing well, if I'm not playing well, and it's one of those things where, yeah, occasionally I'll like when I was down in San Destin playing Sanderson, this time around, I got to the 16th hole and I wasn't playing well.

I knew I was going to come in around 100 and I'm thinking, this is really bad. And I said I had to 16 total. I pull up and I look and I'm in fifth place, or I'm five points ahead of everybody in my division and I'm about ready to hit 100 here. And I am. Like I said to the guy, I can't believe this. Like I'm ahead by five strokes and I'm golfing. Terrible. So what do I do? I'm 17 and 18. I triple bogey one and double bogey the next one. And I figured, well, that's my five points. I still won by three strokes with a 99. It's just when you get in that and again, you have to remember you're in that division where guys normally hit bogeys and double bogeys, so you're not out of it.

Even though you might hit a double or triple, you can still stay in it because of the division that you're playing in. Now, granted, if I was in a division, you know, with a with an eight handicap and I come in with two triples, I'm probably not going to win because these guys are going to get pars and they're going to win. Whereas like I said and again, I, I'm saying this because I'm emphasizing the fact that you don't have to be a really good golfer to compete in something like this. It's it's great for all levels. All competition is I can't tell you enough how much fun it is. And all genders, right? All genders. This is a great tour for women.

I've mentioned it. I'll let down talk about a little bit how it's you're just as apt to win one win as a woman and as a man, right? Absolutely. Brett's wife is one once, twice I she's one, 2 or 3, two, three. She won 200 times this year. And she's beat the guys. Yeah, he beat me. I was in one of those times where she beat me. So, you know, it was just one of those things. And. And the women golf from different tee boxes. The average, the average for my division being the Tiger Division, the lowest division, I believe the criteria is between 5800 and 6100 yards, while the women, the same women in that division would be would be teeing off from 53 to 60 or 53 to 55, 56 or something like that.

So they're about 10% closer. So if we're at 6000, they're going to be at 54. So its average is about 10% less than the men. So again everybody's everybody's eligible. We realize that it's a predominantly male clientele that play in these tours. But there is a lot of females. In fact, I had mentioned earlier that I have 115 people. I believe I have about seven women next week to play in all different divisions, and there is one in the Championship division, you know, so there are some really good golfers out there. I was telling Don, I was I was looking at the National Order of Merit and it shows. It keeps every kind of stat you can think of.

But one of the things that keeps us who's got the most wins in each flight on the season nationally. And I was looking and it's a woman leading my flight nationally. She's got I think yeah, she's got one more. She's got six wins on the year. She played in like 28 tournaments and she's won six of them. She's she's winning, you know, 20% of her tournaments roughly or whatever. So she's doing pretty well for herself. So let's shift gears a little bit kind of away from us. Amateur I want to talk about something we were talking about at dinner tonight. One of the things you brought up is how much you're really impressed with Fair Park being a municipal course. And then you brought up another one that I haven't played, but you said is one of your favorite courses because it is such good shape as a municipal course.

What course was that? Yeah, we're talking about Schenectady Muni. Great course. I actually play in a league at Schenectady Muni. A couple of years ago they got they did a major overhaul on the on the course itself. They put in irrigation from T to green. And what a difference. The course is as green as it's ever been and it's always been a good course as far as the the way they keep the tee boxes, the way they keep the greens itself, it's one of the better courses around.

And the other one that you just mentioned was Frear Park. I'm so impressed with Friar Park because I heard and again, don't quote me on this, but I heard that they got the superintendent from Shaker, I think, and the place has just been turned upside down. It's incredible right now for a municipal course between Fair Park and and Schenectady Muni tours the best around right now as far as I'm concerned.

So and another thing that we got to do today is Don actually came and played Brookhaven today with us. Jeff was there. We've talked about Jeff and how positive he is always about everything. So the four of us got to play today and we kicked your butt today. I got housed, yeah, it was fun. Don and I were on a team, and then Brett and Jeff were on a team, and we had a chance to play as teams. And Don and I did really, really well. You were struggling a little bit today, but it's Brookhaven little bits exaggeration probably. I, I struggled a great bit, but it was still fun being out there. It's golf. So you know you guys all at home know that some days it's good, some days it's bad. I've had a lot of good recently, so I had to wash it out with some bad today apparently.

And as I told these guys, you know, we're we're both going Jake and I are going to the Freer Park tournament on Sunday. Super looking forward to it. I've just looked up my past rounds there. I'm 5050. I got six rounds, three of them in the mid to low 80s and the other three are not good. We'll call mid 90s even though I think they're closer to 100. But they were they were ugly. But anyway looking forward to the course. And so I told them today I said I'm glad I got all my good shots out today at my home course that I have a membership at, and get all the bad ones out of the way and hit good ones on the tournament this week. We are super excited to be with you doing this this year.

This is your first year running the Albany region and we're super excited to see where it goes from here, where it grows. And I'm really looking forward to some of those October courses. I, I already have the Edison Club booked in October, and I'm not going to leak out anything else because I have to talk to people before that. But I have some really nice course. I do have one. The first one next spring is already booked. In April. We're going to Cooperstown and we're going to play leather stocking, which is a phenomenal course. Have you never played it? It's really, really nice. And again, it's a little bit out there. It's probably an hour and 20 minutes away from Albany, maybe an hour and 30.

But if you've never played it you've got to play it. It's one of the. For the longest time, it was my favorite course in the Capital District by far. It's it's a really nice course to play. The cool thing about this tour in particular with Don scheduling Cooperstown made me think of it is you can treat this tour like a destination type, you know, golf outing. It's not just you. You have to drive, you know, 4 hours or 3 hours or two hours or an hour or whatever, and golf your round and then turn around and drive back home. Cooperstown is, as most people know, is the Baseball Hall of Fame is out there. So if you want to spend a day at the baseball Fame, you could go out and do the tournament one day, go have dinner, whatever, get a good night's sleep the next day, go spend the whole day at the Baseball Hall of Fame.

And there's places like that. The one we just did, Jake and I, we went and my wife, we all went out and did the West Point Naval Academy. We went out there, Naval Academy, West Point Army Academy, say that they're going to come out to you. And we went out and did that tournament, but we didn't have to do just that because the traveler's tournament was not too far away. And we went out and we made a destination to do both things. And we're we're in talks right now because Jake and myself and another friend and my wife are all going to Myrtle Beach. We got a condo there on a resort. It's not a golf resort, but we're going to look up and see what's going on. That time here towards the end of October for down there for the tour, and we're going to try to find a tour stop.

Maybe they're on the way down or on the way back, or maybe both, if we're lucky. So you can make, you know, make your trip tailored a little bit sometimes around, you know, other things that are happening outside of just the golf, which is always a lot of fun. Yeah. So again, thank you for stopping by. One thing. One thing I'd like to mention before we we wrap it up here is we spoke about Fair Park and I spoke about the turning Stone next weekend. I have a single day tournament on Friday, and there is actually a regional tournament at turning Stone. It's been around every year. It's a big two day tournament, and if you know anything about golf, if you know anything specifically about turning Stone, there's three courses out there.

There's Shenandoah, there's Gallia, which is kind of a weird name. It's a it's an Indian name. It's actually they call it the K course. It's pronounced Gallia, but it's Kalua, I believe. And then there's a tuna, which is the big horse. That's the one where the PGA has played in the past. And that is part of the two day regional to play there. It's if I'm not mistaken, it's about $350 right now to play a tune by itself. And you can go out there and play in a tournament with Shenandoah and a Tuna on Saturday and Sunday. My tournament that I have is on Friday. It's just Gallia. And following that in, I think it's two weeks after that or three weeks, I'm not sure my tour is playing at Wilt Wick, which is down the North Way in Kingston.

If you've ever gone down the Thruway towards New York City and you're going through Kingston and you see this golf course along the Thruway, that's Wilt Wick. That's where we're playing, and it's a really nice semi-private course. And then the following week, and I believe it's a 16th of August, we're playing at Wynn Hurst, which has recently been renamed, I think it was called I can't remember the name of right now, but it's in Lenox, Massachusetts.

Again, it's a semi-private course. It's not a course where you would normally go there to play, but the really nice courses that we've got lined up here just to complete this year and win Hurst is going to be the last one for this season because following that within, I think it's like three weeks after that is the senior national out in Oregon and then the regular national. And then come October, like I had mentioned, I have the Edison club already booked for one date in October. So we're looking forward to next season. But this season isn't over yet. We still have four more stops this year. Yeah, that's a lot of golf still to be played this year before nationals happens. So like Don was saying, if you're interested in signing up you get that 12 months.

So you could do these last couple tournaments with us and still continue to be part of the tour going through October and all the way back to July of next year. So I think that's a really good point. I didn't know that. I didn't realize that when you sign up, you get a full year, that's all. Let's not forget to that. You know, Dom's got we're going to ten events this year because you said we have four left. We've done six already. So we're going to have ten events. He's not including, you know, the ones that are within an easy drives range. You know, like we did West Point. But you know, turning stone, which technically the two day is not part of that's a regional event.

It's not part of our local event. This is all stuff that you can still accumulate points at, you know, toward towards your National Order of Merit or towards your local order of Merit. And you can drive to these other tournaments. We have a bunch in New York State because we have a Mid-Hudson one region, a Buffalo region, which I guess is kind of gone quiet for a little bit. Buffalo isn't around anymore, but the New York, it's it says Hudson Valley slash New York City. They play a lot of their tournaments on the island out on Long Island, but they play three or maybe four tournaments up like an hour north of New York City. I've played at mansion, actually, I play I'm playing at Mansion Ridge this Saturday.

They have a tour there and I'm going there to play. I'm not. It's not my tournament, but I know the guy out of New York City. Christian is a great guy, does a great job. But his tournaments, I'm going there to play Saturday. Earlier this year, like you guys mentioned, you went out to West Point and played earlier in the season. I played Rotella and I can't remember where. Again, there were about two hours south of here. It's a little long for us to go to, but what we usually do is, you know, last year when I did West Point last year, there was four of us. We got together, we carpooled, we jumped in the van and drove to West Point.

And yeah, it's a two hour ride, but you're sitting there with three other guys and you're talking all the way down. Two hours is nothing. When you're on the road and you're talking especially on the way home, and everybody's talking about their game, about what they did today, what was bad, what was good. And it's a lot of fun to do things like that. You know, we've played I can't remember, I think it was Richter Park, I played Putnam County, I played a whole bunch of them. And again, I say this because I wouldn't drive to Richter Park to play around the Gulf, or I wouldn't drive to Mansion Ridge or to even West Point just to play around the golf. But there's a tournament there, and I take 2 or 3 guys with me, and we all go down and we have a great time.

We play the tournament. Last year I actually won the Tiger Division at West Point last year, so I'm looking forward to it. And, you know, playing in these other tournaments outside of the region. And again, I don't usually play in my own tournaments, but I like to reach out and play in some of the other local ones that are, I say local within a couple hours of here so that we can so that I can play two and two hour circle around the Albany region where that Don's running.

You draw a two hour radius all the way around Albany. You can hit a lot of other tournaments that are that are part of our region in not part of our region. So you can have a really full calendar year if you really want it. And there are people, you know, all over the country that are doing the same thing in their regions, traveling around a bit. And, you know, like I said, the leader in the National Order of Merit, it's got 28 tournaments in this year. So she's she's put in a lot of time, a lot. But it's awesome if you have the free time like I do because I'm self-employed and Jake does because he's self-employed and Don, because he's semi-retired, gives it gives you a lot more freedom to do that stuff, obviously.

But you can play a small schedule if you want. Just do half a dozen tournaments or you can go full in and play 2530 if you want. And there's also I think there's a there's a chapter in new Jersey. There's another chapter in Philadelphia, if I'm not mistaken. So not too far from here. I actually went down, I think it was two years ago, and I played at Trump National in Philly. Unbelievable course. Unbelievable. And again, that was like a 4 or 5 hour ride. But we went down, stayed overnight and I can't remember the course. We played on Friday and then we played a different one on Saturday. It was great. And I can't tell you enough how much it makes you want to play different courses. It makes you want to try another course here, another course there, and you don't mind driving because like I said, it's not something I would normally do.

I wouldn't drive to Philadelphia to play around to golf, but I would go to Philadelphia to play in a tournament. And it just makes it gives you a different attitude towards playing. The tour made me buy a minivan to put all four of us golf addicts in the minivan, and we call it the Excel golf cart. We load up and we go to these tournaments and like he said, it doesn't matter if it's a two hour ride for us because we're all up for the four of us that are driving.

But we all have the longest commute, typically nearly the longest commute. We do have somebody way up by the Canadian border. We have a couple guys on tour from there. Shout out to Dave and James. But anyway, yeah, we all hop in the van and go. And like Don said, you get talking about your rounds afterwards and in a blink your home. Yeah, because you just can't help yourselves. I really appreciate you starting this region and setting up these tournaments and running these tournaments and doing such a wonderful job with it, because it really does make it feel like it's above an amateur. You just don't feel like an amateur when you're out there. One of the best things that I love, that you do, and we joked about it when we were the last group and you were like, I don't know if I'm gonna nous.

You and Adam and myself were like, wait a minute. What do you mean you're not going to announce us just because there's nobody else here? You have to announce this. So that's something that Don does that I think is absolutely wonderful, because it makes it feel like something more than just being an amateur. When he announces who you are and where you're from, right before you go to Duff, that first shot off the tee box, but hopefully not.

I'm well familiar with that. I'm real. First boxes are not my friend. All right. So thank you, Don. We're going to let you get out of here. Appreciate your time and appreciate everything. Thank you. Appreciate it. Thanks, Don. Appreciate your support. I always enjoy having you guys along. Sign up guys. Take care. One of our sponsors is Blueprint Leadership Development. Rob was nice enough to sponsor us and I really appreciate him doing that. If you're curious about working with a coach, if you're looking for a business coach, Rob is awesome. I've worked with him for many years. I'll have a link to his information in the description, so go down there and check that out and find out more about what blueprint leadership development is all about and what Rob can do for you and your business.

I also want to do a shout out to Luxury Box. As I say every episode, it's where we get to record this. This is actually in one of the simulators that Dave has here at Luxury Box, and it's a great opportunity for us to showcase the room that we're in and showcase the screens and stuff like that, and eventually down the road, we hope to do more with the simulator to have some fun with people we have on the podcast.

But thank you, Dave, for allowing us to come here to use this and to record the podcast here in this room. It's a great opportunity for us, but if you're looking for somewhere to swing when it's raining out or it's cold or it's the winner, the luxury box is the place to go. All right, so now that we had that great conversation with Don about the US amateur, and we got to really hear what he has put together and what he's working on. Again, if you're interested in that, please check out the links in the description. It'll be to the US amateur website as well as the Albany region, so you can see what that's all about.

So now that we got that out of the way, what time is it? It's time for the rule today folks. I got an interesting one for you. It's pretty obscure. It's not going to happen very often, but I thought it was pretty interesting when I looked it up. So normally in golf, you cannot hit a moving ball so your balls on the green, it starts to move because of the slope of the green or for wind or whatever, you would incur a penalty stroke.

Normally if you hit the ball while it was in motion. There is one exception to the rule though. If you are in a hazard, for instance, you're in a small brook and the ball is rolling down the brook more or less, or at the edge of the brook, maybe there's some grass alongside the edge of it or whatever, and you deem that you can slash it out of the water while the ball is still moving. Perfectly legal without incurring a penalty stroke. I want to see you do that sometime. I've seen plenty of people on the PGA tour take off their shoes and socks and roll up their pant legs and and out of hazards, both water hazards. Tompkins got probably the most famous in the history of golf when he walked out towards where his ball was, and he didn't realize that he was going to sink about waist deep in the mud.

He. That's probably the most famous one I can think of, but I've never seen somebody hit a moving ball in a hazard area, so that would be pretty interesting. It is something I would try if the situation came up, although I did damage my 60 the other day trying to do a similar thing. Ball was fixed in a position, but I it was right up against some rocks underneath the grass at the edge of a creek, and I didn't see the rock and dented my 60 degree wedge.

My wife's going to love me when I tell her I got to replace the head on that. So. Yeah, that was that was very difficult to hear and then see what happened. It's funny when you're talking about with the ball moving. So during one of the first PGA events this year, they were having so much trouble with the wind coming off, I think the ocean that it was actually blowing golf balls that people had set picked up their marker and the ball would roll away, and it was because of the wind.

And of course, they they were very careful not to hit it. They didn't want to get that stroke, and they had to go to an official and be like, hey, what do I do? I can't get it to stay in place. And so that's really interesting that, yeah, you got to pay attention to that. If it starts to move back away and let it do what it's going to do. Now the question is if it rolls, do you put it back? If the ball rolls while you're perfect example, you set it down on the green and it's sitting there for a second and the wind blows and it blows it like a foot away from where it was. I would assume you then pick up the ball and put it back where it was.

So the best of my knowledge, when the ball stops moving, you put it back to the closest place you think in proximity you're supposed to again come to an agreement with the people you know in your group as to where the ball previously was. No, I've seen instances where they've had to do that for drop purposes, whether a ball cleared the water before it went in or went straight into the water, they have to come to some kind of unanimous decision amongst the group as to where the ball should be placed for either a penalty stroke or in the case of a moving ball on a green, it wouldn't be a penalty stroke.

You just put it back. All right. And so that's our rule today. So this weekend we've got Fir Park on Sunday. This will probably be coming out after we played that tournament. So we'll be sharing about that tournament in the next episode. And then we'll also be talking about some of the other courses that Don mentioned that we have coming up in the next several weeks and next month. We have two of them that we're looking forward to that he spoke about. And then we've got other trips that we're talking about doing in other places, like we're playing Windy Hills tomorrow morning. Looking forward to that. It's more of a grip it and rip it course, which is something we have not had at Brookhaven. I will report that I played today, I played much better.

I shot a 94 at Brookhaven. I was super happy with that. Still had some trouble with some holes that some missed, chips that I wish I could get back. A couple missed putts today that I really wish I could have back, but I felt like I was more in control of my game and a game wasn't controlling me. And I sit down. Has to be on my cart on Sunday. Unfortunately it won't be, but Don is the most calm guy to play golf with and I love it. But I just joked with him that hey, I think of playing better because you're in my cart, so I don't know what was different today. I couldn't really tell you.

I know that you came up to me at one point and said to me, I feel like you're more relaxed today. And I think it was. We had a good time playing the two verses too. So I am excited to go play Windy Hills tomorrow morning, and then I'm excited to play Fair Park on Sunday. Now I will tell you, Fair Park is no joke. Those greens are brutal, especially the front nine. They are not to be played around with and they are not to be above the hole. So I'm not looking forward to that part. But I know the course pretty well. We've played it a bunch of times with scrambles. We played it a bunch of times playing our own ball, so it's definitely a place that we've played quite a bit, so I'm looking forward to that.

Are you looking forward to Sunday? I am, the shape of my golf game is not where I like it to be, and ideally. But that hasn't seemed to hurt me much when I go to nicer courses. And freer is a very well kept course. I've done some winning this year. I've been fortunate enough to be in the win column a bunch of times, and it's mainly, as I said to you guys earlier when we were having dinner after our golf round, that I tend to play better on nicer courses.

I, you know, places with hard pan places, super, super thin, rough, you know, it runs through easy. Those places are my toughest courses for fear. Park's not going to play like that. Freer Park has some danger, for sure, but most of it is just if you keep it in play, it suits me pretty well, I think. I think I'll do okay there. And with that, never leave a birdie putt short. Jake.