As we begin our 10th season here in Columbus, I'm going to try to do a newsletter like this every couple of months or so in order to rely a little less on email to communicate important information to you guys. With the email issues that the website frequently has (in case you are reading this El Presidente, there's no judgement here) and the issues that I had this offseason with gmail, I realize that sending an email doesn't mean that my information has been received by you. So if I start posting newsletters on here, you all are able to access the site and read it, as well as refer to it later if necessary. I also hope to include some fun sections in future newsletters... maybe a player spotlight, or unusual / impressive statistics section... something to spice them up a bit. Every article has a comment section at the bottom if you have any feedback you want to provide.
I want to take a couple of minutes to make sure we are all on the same page so that we can make this season run much smoother than the last couple of seasons. Ever since we've seen our membership numbers boom starting around 2017/2018, we've seen a couple of trends that we would like to address.
Over the last couple of years we have seen 2 trends appear in regards to pre-payments.
1) Sending a payment does not mean you are registered for the event! If you send a payment, you still need to go to the event page and register to be included on the event roster. In the past I have taken the time to go in and manually register you if you happen to do this. Going forward, I will not be registering you. If you send a payment and don't register for the event, I cannot guarantee you a spot in the event. If I happen to have a spot available after the deadline and you realize you didn't register, I can very likely squeeze you in. If you send a payment without registering and show up to the event and I don't have you on the roster, again I will try to squeeze you in only if I have a spot for you. If I cannot squeeze you in, sorry. You will be issued a refund of your payment. Please don't let this happen to you!
2) Send Paypal payments using the "Friends & Family" option! More and more we are having Paypal payments sent to us using the "Goods & Services" payment option. Choosing this option allows Paypal to take out their fees as you are indicating that the payment is for a business transaction. We are not a business. We are not selling you anything. We are not providing the service for which you are paying. We are simply a middleman holding on to your money in order to pay the course in one lump sum when we show up to play. Going forward, if you send a payment indicating it is for Goods & Services and Paypal takes fees out of the payment, we will refund the payment to you and not mark you paid for the event. Resending the payment using Friends & Family will get you marked as paid for the event.
Another trend we have had pop up is a spike in the number of no-shows we have each season. No-shows cause stress and chaos while we try to make last-second adjustments and is an all-around dick move. Things happen. Things pop-up at the last minute. It's okay... just email, call or text, hit me up on Discord, send smoke signals - just do something to let me know that you won't be there so that I can plan accordingly and not be waiting all the way up until your tee time hoping that you show up. I will always confirm with you to let you know that I have received your notice. If you've pre-paid, you will be issued a refund.
Going forward, if you pre-pay and no-show an event, you will not be issued a refund (unless you have a darn good reason). After your first no-show, you will be required to pre-pay for every event you want to participate in for the remainder of the season. If you no-show on us twice in your career, you run the risk of being removed from the chapter for the remainder of that season. A third career no-show will result in removal from the chapter permanently.
Jeff and I believe that the trend of no-shows is actually due to the fact that we have allowed you to register for all events from the very beginning of the season. This has sometimes resulted in people forgetting that they are registered for the event. For every event, on the Monday prior I send out an email to everyone registered with a reminder of the date, time and location of the event along with some fun stats about the event and course and maybe a couple of event specific rules or announcements. If you receive this email, that means you are registered for the event. I will also send another email on Thursday or Friday announcing that the tee times and foursomes have been assigned and are posted on the event page. Again, if you receive this email, that means you are registered for the event.
Going forward, we will not be opening up registration for an event until roughly 4 weeks prior to the event itself. We are hoping that this will reduce the number of times we have to deal with someone forgetting that they registered for an event months ago and in turn reduce the number of no-shows we have. I will always send out an email to all members announcing that an event is open for registration. I also send out an email roughly 1 week prior to the registration deadline for each event as a reminder to sign up if you are planning on playing in the event. But it's also a good idea to check the events every once in a while since I know email isn't always 100% reliable.
Having said all of this, as of the date this is posted I have unregistered everyone from all events beyond our Bastards event. I have left registration open for the Rebel Beach Am-Am and the Bastards. The Midwest Regional event is also open for registration as this is not being hosted by the Columbus chapter.
I highly encourage everyone to use something other than the default monkey picture as your profile picture. It doesn't have to be a picture of you, but it can if you want it to be. Memes are always a good way to go. A scene from a golf movie, maybe. A cool picture you took or saw somewhere. Just something to help show off your personality a bit. My goal is to have no more monkeys in the chapter this season. Let's make it happen!
Setting up a Discord server for us has turned out to be a great decision. (Thanks again Schmidtty!) So many conversations all year round! Now that the weather is starting to get nice again, I anticipate our channel dedicated for "Needing a 4th" will be quite active with people looking to get out and play all week long. We also share various outing information, if you play PGA2K21 we have a channel to organize and discuss the game. There's even an audio channel if you want to jump on and actually talk with others. (I saw a few of our PGA2K21 guys in this channel not too long ago chatting it up while I assume they were playing a round online.) I encourage you to join the server and join in on the conversations. We even have an area for non-members to pop in and learn about us and engage with members.
If you are a member and join our Discord, please send me (Supreme Dick-Tator) a message on there letting me know who you are so that I can open up the member-only channels to you.
Here's an invite link to join the server - https://discord.gg/ygQmfyv
| # | Name | "Money" |
|---|---|---|
| 1. | John Lewis (3) | $3.49 |
| 2. | Glenn Person (3) | $3.40 |
| 3. | John Weiher (3) | $3.03 |
| 4. | Matt Moore (3) | $3.00 |
| 5. | Mike Sheffield (3) | $2.93 |
| 6. | Pete "Padre" Bedell (3) | $2.77 |
| 7. | Jonathan DeMasters (3) | $2.76 |
| 8. | Andy Lugo (3) | $2.69 |
| 9. | James Davidson (3) | $2.67 |
| 10. | Brent Riggs (3) | $2.65 |
