Craig's Weekend Release

For the week of December 28th thru January 2nd


Around the Club:
We are into our final week of the year. This past week with the rain we haven’t been able to open the range. Our goal will be to open it tomorrow and pray it doesn’t rain too much on Wednesday or we might have to close it again. Be grateful, we haven’t had any mudslides. This week we have nothing scheduled that should knock you off balance with your golf plans.

Upcoming Events:
New Years Party-We will be having our second annual East Coast version of New Years. The ball will drop at Valencia Country Club at 9:00. This will allow you to come to VCC and go home and shut it down by 10:00 if you are like me. It also allows you double your pleasure if you are a professional and go ring in the New Year West Coast style. Please call if you are interested in joining us. Emails have been going out all week.
Men’s Team Play-Starting in January the Men’s Team play will be playing on Thursdays. If you are interested in participating please send me an email with your shirt size. If you plan on bringing guests out during the week please check our schedule as we alternate home and home with other clubs through the middle of February. I will continue to send emails out, i just don’t want any of you caught off guard.
Titleist Pro V Sale-This is the last week you can get the Pro V for under $40. Starting in the new year the price will go up. If you need to stock up, now is the time!

I hope this email finds all of you well. Please be safe this week if you do decide to participate in the festivities of the year. It is a pleasure to work for you all and i hope all of you are healthy and safe. Thank you for making it such a great year for all of us at Valencia Country Club.


Schedule of events for the week of December 28th thru January 2nd:

Tuesday: Ladies Day-Tee Closed from 8:45 to 10:00; Open Play Rest of the Day
Wednesday: Open Play
Thursday: Open Play
Friday: Open Play; Tee Times all day
Saturday: No Tee Times; Winter Tee Time Policy!
Sunday: No Tee Times; Winter Tee Time Policy!

UK Trip

Well folks, we have all made it to the UK. We have seen 14 of the 16 potential "Accidental Tourists." This photo was the first sign i saw while arriving at London Heathrow. When traveling i really do appreciate the fact that they state the obvious. I have had the alternative experience to the sign.

Whistler B.C.

It has been a wonderful trip to the Northwestern corner of our continent. Whistler is brilliant and everybody that is on this trip would agree sights and friendships that only marveled each other. The Junker's, M. Becker's, Harris', Malone's, Bernard's, Bragdon's and Allensworth's all had a blast on this experience. The golf was forged between mountains and streams and the vistas were shaped with bear sightings and laughs. Pictures are worth a thousand words, but the stories will have to be told!

Men's President's Cup

You can access the Flights of the President's Cup by clicking on the link below. Please contact your match and play before the deadline date. Protocol is that the Lower Handicap golfer would contact the Higher Handicap golfer. Please let's keep the gamesmanship to a minimum and just get in touch with your opponent regardless of the Handicap and get the matches played. You can make a tee time, but we might need to pair you up to keep the course moving and not run out of carts. Good luck in your match!

Craig

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0AooqEkr1tK-sdFNBSVhEM2NST3dPaWRYLUVKcU9QNmc&hl=en#

PGA Expo

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Eriko and I just returned from the PGA Expo in Orlando, FL. After a Redeye where we had a baby crying 2 rows behind us and a guy that sat behind us telling his neighbor about his life story and he was 117 we arrived in Orlando very well rested. I was at least smart enough to book us an exit row that we got kicked out of because they didn't think Eriko spoke fluent English, just kidding. It was a funny experience, we had this Asian woman ask us that and all of us in the exit row couldn't understand what she was saying because her English was very broken. So about the exit row, for all of you that think you can out-smart the system, a little word of advise. Ask for the second row in the exit row, the first row seats don't recline. I am due for a neck rub if any of you want to come by my office.

So Thursday i had the opportunity to sit in a room with Bob Vokey, the Titleist Wedge designer. It was a great learning experience and we really discussed the affects that the new grooves have on the design of clubs and the lofts. As many of you know Phil Mickelson took some grief for using an old Ping Eye 2 wedge, with grooves that were box, but approved for play. The reason he took this 60 degree wedge and bent it to 64 is because with the new grooves the ball is just sliding up the face on a 64. There isn't enough traction for the ball to bite on the face. He really was amazing to listen to. The ball flight they are finding is a bit higher and not quite spinning as much. From the fairway the difference isn't too dramatic, but they are finding the Pro's are thrilled since now for a back pin they can hit it at the flag and the ball isn't spinning back 20 feet. These changes won't bother most of us as changes to the casual golfer doesn't go into effect until 2024. What i wanted to really share with you was a concept that i take for granted but i thought you might enjoy. When really good golfers get a wedge in their hands we look at trajectory. Trajectory can be broken down into 9 windows. For a straight shot you have, high, low, and middle. Then you add left to right and right to left depending on what the shot requires. Next time you go out and have a wedge in your hands, imagine looking through nine window panes and pick one to hit your shot through. The short game gives all of us an opportunity to be very creative. Have some fun out there!

On Friday i sat in the room with Scotty Cameron as you can see in the photo with our very own Jason Gore in the background. Scotty talked about his past and what got him into putter design. Scotty is not an instructor of putting. He is an artist that studies what happens in a putt and how to help that process as much as possible. The basic theories behind putting is the ball is in a minor depression because of the weight of the ball and gravity. The putter hits the ball and lifts it, studies have proven 4 degrees is the perfect loft to create that experience, out of its depression. The ball ideally comes out with no spin and lands and begins it's roll down the target line. Now there are only 15,672 sequences that have to happen to make that consistent, that is why he makes his putters the way that he does. He guarantees his putter to take out 14,327 of those sequences leaving you with only....my brain hurts. It was a great trip and please feel free to come find Eriko or me to discuss anything else we saw.

GHIN Update

Tournament scores that were brought over during the conversion into the player's file only included the date of the round and the handicap differential. In order for the information to be displayed in GHIN the score, course rating and Slope rating had to be artificially created to arrive at the correct handicap differential. So if the player sees a score listed under the two low tournament scores that they did not shoot please understand the handicap differential and the date are correct but the score and ratings do not match what they shot that day.

If a golfer is reactivated at the SCGA office or through www.ghinclub.net, the Handicap Index will not be displayed until the next revision takes place. If you would like the golfer to be listed with an index immediately you will need to use the modified index feature. An option is to use the player's trend and have it removed on the day of the next Handicap Index revision.

The association golfer list has been pushed down to all clubs in Southern California. When a player in Southern California posts a score they will be recognized with their name and current index prior to entering the scoring information.

You can look up any player's Handicap Index in Southern California on the posting screen by selecting the Guest CRS HCP Lookup button and then selecting the HDCP Lookup button. By entering the last name of the golfer you will see a list of player's in Southern California and what their Handicap Index is. However, you are not able to retrieve the player's SCGA membership number.

Despite Downpour, Drought Still With Us

It might seem odd to talk about a drought after a weeklong series of thundering storms drenched the Bay Area and heaped snow on the Sierra, but California's water lords know the state's lingering thirst cannot be quenched by one showy display of wet weather.

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The recent downpours have temporarily brought the state back from the dusty brink, but officials with the California Department of Water Resources claim much more rain and snow will have to fall if the Golden State is going to pull out of its drought.

"It took three years to get this dry," said David Rizzardo, chief of the department's snow surveys section. "Barring an extraordinary year, it's going to take more than one year to get out of it."

The next two months will tell the tale, according to Rizzardo. The state could emerge from drought if the storms caused by that tempestuous weather maker known as El Niño keep coming, he said. But they would have to be particularly ferocious.

The Weather Service predicts increasing clouds today leading to a chance of rain, with heavier downpours likely Monday. Drier weather is in the forecast for midweek, possibly followed by more rain next weekend. At least a couple of feet of snow should fall in the Sierra, but there will be less precipitation than last week and the storms will be less intense, a spokesman said.

Forecasters are predicting regular storms until spring, but it is difficult for meteorologists to predict what will happen a week ahead, let alone several months in the future.

Although rainfall is now above normal in the Bay Area, Lake Oroville, the State Water Project's primary source of drinking water, is only 31 percent of capacity. That's about 48 percent of average for this date.

Reservoirs statewide, including Hetch Hetchy, appear to be doing relatively well, hovering around 72 percent of average. But most of them are tiny compared with Lake Oroville, which has a capacity of 3.5 million acre-feet of water. An acre-foot is about 326,000 gallons, enough to cover an acre in a foot of water. Hetch Hetchy holds 360,400 acre-feet of water.

Rain and snow runoff in the northern Sierra feeds both Lake Oroville and the state's largest reservoir, Shasta Lake, which can hold 4.5 million acre-feet and is part of the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation's Central Valley Project. Shasta is only half full. The two dams provide water to millions of people in cities up and down the state and on farms in the Central Valley.

Rizzardo said one cannot adequately gauge how much water will be available during the year by measuring water in the state reservoirs in January. That's because dam operators are required to leave a certain amount of space - from 10 to 20 percent of capacity - for flood control purposes and to release water to help the fish.

The best gauges, he said, are precipitation and snowpack, which often fall in line with one another.

As of now, a little more than 23 inches of rain has fallen in the northern Sierra. On average, 50 inches of rain fall each year, meaning another 27 inches would have to fall this year just to reach normal. The 50-year average between Feb. 1 and the end of May is only 21 inches, Rizzardo said. The deficit so far is the result of dry weather in November and December.

The water content of snow in the Sierra, where the bulk of California's water supply is stored during the winter, is currently 107 percent of average statewide. But the telltale measurement, Rizzardo said, will be on April 1, which is considered the peak for snowpack.

"If we get up to average this year it will certainly help bring the reservoirs back to a respectable level, but if next year is another dry year then we will plunge back into it," Rizzardo said. "One good year would give us temporary relief. A couple of good years would pull us out of it."

Things are looking a lot better in areas that don't rely as much on the state and Central Valley water projects. San Francisco, for example, draws its water from the Hetch Hetchy Reservoir in Yosemite, which was at 77 percent of capacity after the big deluge Thursday.

"We're looking good for this year," said Tyrone Jue, spokesman for the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission. "If things continue along this trend, we are going to be in really good shape."

The East Bay Municipal Utility District had plenty of water even before the storms because its 1.3 million customers in Alameda and Contra Costa counties conserved so much water, according to spokesman Charles Hardy.

"We were one of the first water districts to declare a drought emergency in 2008 and since then our customers have saved nearly 40,000 acre-feet of water, enough to serve four or five small cities in our service area for a year," Hardy said.

Regardless of how things go this winter, water districts across Central and Northern California will not be resting easy. If not the vagaries of the weather or climate change, they have to worry about crumbling infrastructure and environmental disputes limiting water pumping through the critical Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta.

"The reality is we have far more people in the state than we did in the 1970s and far more regulations, so the constraints are greater on what water is available," Rizzardo said. "The state's water has a lot of hands in it" even when there is plenty of rain and snow.

E-mail Peter Fimrite at pfimrite@sfchronicle.com.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/01/23/BA0S1BL55V.DTL#ixzz0deN6H0Pa