First Month Of Play Comes To An End

January play ended this past Friday at Jackson National on a sunny, pleasant day. However, the weather this month has been harsh and has limited TFF to only 2 matches. Ron, who thinks his play in the first match of the year was good enough for Player Of The Year, skipped out on the fivesome to go duck hunting. This left his partner LT in somewhat of a dilemma. Would LT pick up Sam* as a substitute partner? Two time Player Of The Year, Sam*, although a dominate force as an individual player, has the worst record in team match play of all the fivesome. However, LT was confident in not only his play, but in the lack of game of team Karl/Mike and agreed to the match. Sam* proved his worth on the first hole as his birdie gave the team a 2 point lead. Mike answered with a birdie of his on on #2 and squared the match. Karl's par on #3 was good for 2 points and when his 2nd shot on #6 stoped 3 inches from eagle, team K/M went up 7 and cruised on to victory. Karl was zoned in on the pins for most of the day, which explains his 8 one putts. After the match a frustrated LT talked to the press. "I don't understand it! Between Sam* and I we own The Provisional Mulligan Cup, but whenever he plays with me we lose. Next time I consider Sam* as my partner remind me that it would be easier to just tell Karl that I owe him another lunch." TFF wishes Sam* a safe and successful trip to Panama. The forecast doesn't look good for this Friday, but at least the groundhog didn't see his shadow.

Results:
S*-41/39-80-2(birdies)
M-38/44-82-1
K-41/43-84-2
LT-44/48-92-0

Notes of interest:
LT owes K 2 and gets 2
K owes R 1 and gets 1
M owes R ? and R gets ?
Team K/M give 13

Ron (The Comeback Kid)

The first match 0f 2011 was played at Jackson National last Friday. The two stories of the day, were Ron's start and Ron's finish. Ron began the day with a 5 over 9 on the #9 handicap first hole. At this point he was on track to shoot a ninety over par 162. After one hole, Ron was 5 strokes behind Karl, had to play Mike even for the rest of the round, and was 2 down against team K/M. When his par putt rolled in on #18 he secured three victories, beating K by 3, M by 1 and a team victory(team victory actually occurred on hole 16 where Ron parred the tough par 4). Other than Ron's comeback, the day was uneventful as the wind and cold were used as excuses for the fivesomes scores. All five look forward to better playing conditions and looking for other reasons to blame their poor play on.
Scores/Birdies
Sam*-41/40-81/2
Mike-41/44-85/2
Ron-47/42-89
Karl-45/47-92
LT-44/49-93

Notes of interest:
M owes R 2 from today plus ? from last year R only gets 4
K owes R 1 and gets 1
LT and K even and LT gets 1
Team LT/R will get 14

Sam Wylie*

Happy new year!!, and welcome to the 2011 TFF season. Have you made your new year's resolutions? I'm sure it's the same as mine, to take home The Provisional Mulligan Cup! This brings us to the topic of this blog, who won the 2010 award? First, a quick review of the season. Well, all five of the fivesome can best be described by one adjective: unimpressive!! With this in mind, TFF voting committie (Karl) went to this blog spot to review the year and all the reliable statistics that this site is famous for. Unfortunately, he was startled to find that the last post was in August. What happened? TFF investigative force is currently looking into this matter. Early discoveries have been that it appears that Karl sold TFF scorecards on EBay to fund his extravagant Pacific Northwest trip. It appears that these scorecards from September to December are lost forever. As a result TFF voting committee (Karl) has made his decision. The 2010 Provisional Cup Winner is Sam Wylie*!! Congratulations to Sam, but you may have noticed the * behind Wylie. What's the * for? The symbol * is an Asterisk. An asterisk is a typographical symbol whose origin is from the Greek word "asteriskos" which means "little star". The asterisk is used to call out a footnote. In sports, an asterisk is used to indicate that a record is somehow tainted by circumstances, which are putatively explained in a footnote supposedly referenced by the asterisk. This usage arose after the 1961 baseball season in which Roger Maris broke Babe Ruth's 34-year-old single season home run record. Because Ruth had amassed 60 home runs in a season with only 154 games, compared to Maris's 61 over 162 games, baseball commissioner Ford Frick announced that Maris' accomplishment would be recorded with an asterisk. The NFL, NBA, and NHL have all had increases in the amount of games they play each season, yet no player in any of these leagues has ever had an asterisk put next to his name for breaking a record of some past great star. Hank Aaron did not have an asterisk put next to his name when he broke Ruth's career home run record despite having some 3000 more at-bats. So, what is the footnote that the * behind Wylie calls out? The footnote read's: "Due to the lack of impressive play by any of The Friday Fivesome in the 2010 season, the trophy will remain with Sam. Thus Sam's record of consecutive awards will remain tainted throughout eternity." Well, there you have it, the answer to what will surly become a frequently asked trivia question, "Name the only two players with asterisks behind their records?" Wylie and Maris. Hopefully for both Sam and Roger, perhaps the steroid era will be loaded with asterisks behind such names as Barry Bonds etc. and Sam's name will be lost in the crowd. Well, there you have it. Good luck to all members of TFF as the 2011 season hopefully begins this Friday.