President's Message - February 2015 I hope everyone had a great holiday season and nice winter break. Another SGNM season will begin in late-March. Michael Romero, our new tournament chairman has worked hard to put together a great tournament venue for us. This year we will return to Piñon Hills and Riverview, Belen and we’ll be going to Pendaries for the first time. Read Michael's write up that discusses which courses we selected for 2015. At our first 2015 Executive Board meeting, we discussed all of the recommendations that were brought up at the annual meeting. After much discussion, we again decided not to implement a lateral drop rule for balls thought to be lost in the rough. We have tried the lateral drop rule before without much success. This rule was difficult for players to understand and implement equitably. We use the lateral rule at clubs, like Paa-Ko, where it is a local rule and we will continue to emphasize the USGA rule about playing a provisional ball if you think the original ball went OB or is lost outside of a hazard as well as the five minute search rule for a lost ball. If followed, both procedures will help speed up play. For the first time ever, the Executive Board has voted to allow a very slow group to let faster players play through. This does not mean your group should continue to play slow; however, letting faster players through may eliminate some of the frustration another group may have waiting for a much slower group to finish. We’ll announce this at our tournaments. The Board again decided not to define a maximum stroke limit per hole. Since the winning margin is often only one or two strokes, it was felt that if a player had one or two bad holes that were stroke limited and they played really well during the rest of the round, that they might win or place a tournament to the displeasure of other players. Our earlier analysis of all scorecards from several SGNM tournaments showed that limiting strokes for a hole would only affect a few players on a small number of holes among several thousand and it would probably not help speed up the pace of play. This year there are no Super Seniors. You should have selected your tee at the beginning of the year based on being age 70 or above or greater than an 18 handicap at the end of 2014. 30+ handicappers will always play forward. We encourage all of those eligible to move up to do so. It may make your game more enjoyable, especially on the harder courses. If you still want to move up, but did not check the move up block on your renewal form, contact Kaz before the end of February and he’ll make the change. Another big change is that those with a handicap of 14 or below can choose to move back a set of tees in any particular tournament. You will still compete in the same flight, but you will gain additional strokes depending on the difference in course rating of the two tees. Please annotate this on your entry form. This is a test for 2015 and we’ll see how it goes. On a final note, the Executive Board carefully considered and supported allowing ladies to join the organization during 2014. This change was in line with the spirit of the organization which is to allow senior golfers to play competitive golf at various New Mexico courses around the state, develop new lasting friendships and have fun. This by-laws change was approved unanimously at our annual meeting in November. We now have 5 ladies in the organization and hope they will join us on the links this season and ask their friends to join. Please welcome them to SGNM when you meet them on the course. I wish you all the best of luck and success in our 2015 tournaments. I look forward to meeting all of you on the course. Warren Von Worley President, SGNM