President's Message
2019 - Year End President's Letter
Hi ladies-
Happy New Year everyone! We're wrapping up a great year of golf by adding a new annual award to our league--the Most Improved Golfer award. This recognizes the person who really worked on her game over the year and made significant improvements. The formula for calculating it is the USGA's recommended method, using handicaps on January 1 and December 1 each year. To be eligible, you must be a member for the full year, post at least 12 scores from the league days and post at least 50 rounds for the year. I won't announce the 2019 winner here, but it was a close race, and the large majority of women improved their handicaps over the year. I will, however, call our the slacker who finished dead last and whose handicap went up significantly--that would be me. Maybe I'm just setting myself up to win most Improved next year...
As you've heard, there are big changes coming to the GHIN handicap system in 2020. The new World Handicap System will standardize golf handicaps around the world. You've already gotten a note from Trish and Alex on some of the changes and they will have more updates as they learn more details. Here are a couple of things to know for the very near term. With the changes to the GHIN system, everyone in GHIN must have a unique email address, so if you share an email address with someone, now is the time to change one of them. From January 1 through 5 we cannot post any scores to GHIN. If you play during those days, post your scores on January 6. With the new system, handicaps are updated daily, so it will be critical that we all post our scores each day we play.
This is my last letter as President and the decade is coming to a close. Ten years ago, most of us had never heard of Saddlebrooke Ranch and there was no SBR Women's Golf Association. Colleen Carey took the lead in forming the group and 13 people attended the kick-off meeting in 2012. That year Jeanne Hardiman won the first Club Championship. As Mindy says, she used to be able to have the entire league sitting around her dining room table for brunch. For a few years, the Ranch grew slowly and so did the SBRWGA. In 2015, 20 women played in the Ryder Cup event (now called the Solheim Cup) and 2016 was our first Member/Member tournament. By then the Ranch housing boom had started, and in early 2017 we had 50 members in the league. There were lots of changes in 2018 -- a new "potty" on the golf course, a new restaurant, our first Senior Club Champion (congrats to Marlyce Mycka), and our first time hosting (and winning) the Robson Challenge. This year we had our first Member/Guest event with almost 100 ladies participating, and we added Gold tees to the course to give people more playing options. We now have strong league representation in a number of outside events, including our teams in the Catalina Cup, the Tucson City Women's league, and the Kachina Dolls events. We started this year with about 75 members, have over 90 today, and are on track to hit 100 early in 2020. The future of our league is very bright and I'm looking forward to many exciting changes to come. None of this would be possible without all the volunteers who put in the time to make our league and our events so fantastic.
Thank you everyone, and happy golfing!
Jean
Hi ladies-
Happy New Year everyone! We're wrapping up a great year of golf by adding a new annual award to our league--the Most Improved Golfer award. This recognizes the person who really worked on her game over the year and made significant improvements. The formula for calculating it is the USGA's recommended method, using handicaps on January 1 and December 1 each year. To be eligible, you must be a member for the full year, post at least 12 scores from the league days and post at least 50 rounds for the year. I won't announce the 2019 winner here, but it was a close race, and the large majority of women improved their handicaps over the year. I will, however, call our the slacker who finished dead last and whose handicap went up significantly--that would be me. Maybe I'm just setting myself up to win most Improved next year...
As you've heard, there are big changes coming to the GHIN handicap system in 2020. The new World Handicap System will standardize golf handicaps around the world. You've already gotten a note from Trish and Alex on some of the changes and they will have more updates as they learn more details. Here are a couple of things to know for the very near term. With the changes to the GHIN system, everyone in GHIN must have a unique email address, so if you share an email address with someone, now is the time to change one of them. From January 1 through 5 we cannot post any scores to GHIN. If you play during those days, post your scores on January 6. With the new system, handicaps are updated daily, so it will be critical that we all post our scores each day we play.
This is my last letter as President and the decade is coming to a close. Ten years ago, most of us had never heard of Saddlebrooke Ranch and there was no SBR Women's Golf Association. Colleen Carey took the lead in forming the group and 13 people attended the kick-off meeting in 2012. That year Jeanne Hardiman won the first Club Championship. As Mindy says, she used to be able to have the entire league sitting around her dining room table for brunch. For a few years, the Ranch grew slowly and so did the SBRWGA. In 2015, 20 women played in the Ryder Cup event (now called the Solheim Cup) and 2016 was our first Member/Member tournament. By then the Ranch housing boom had started, and in early 2017 we had 50 members in the league. There were lots of changes in 2018 -- a new "potty" on the golf course, a new restaurant, our first Senior Club Champion (congrats to Marlyce Mycka), and our first time hosting (and winning) the Robson Challenge. This year we had our first Member/Guest event with almost 100 ladies participating, and we added Gold tees to the course to give people more playing options. We now have strong league representation in a number of outside events, including our teams in the Catalina Cup, the Tucson City Women's league, and the Kachina Dolls events. We started this year with about 75 members, have over 90 today, and are on track to hit 100 early in 2020. The future of our league is very bright and I'm looking forward to many exciting changes to come. None of this would be possible without all the volunteers who put in the time to make our league and our events so fantastic.
Thank you everyone, and happy golfing!
Jean
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