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Weather
From Ballston Spa Country Club
I have been searching for the correct word to describe the weather. Terrible just does not seem to be appropriate and I have been warned not to use some of the other descriptions I have heard around the course. We certainly have had a stretch of cool and rainy weather. I cannot remember a time when we had to restrict carts on the course this many times. If the weather forecast is correct we may be heading into a more favorable weather pattern. Even with the harsh weather we have had some positives. The course is in excellent shape and the greens have recovered from the early spring aeration. Project day saw many volunteers working on edging, weeding and spreading mulch. Work has started on the bunker renovation on number # 8. In case you forgot below is a picture looking down number 1 on a sunny day!!!
Volunteers
How did the Superintendent and his small crew get the above projects done while completing the opening of the course and the normal day to day maintenance? He could not have accomplished all of this without the many volunteers who donate a few hours of their time to assist with the projects at hand. I have always marveled, and written about, the generosity of our members in taking pride and ownership in their club and volunteering for the many projects. Thanks for all you do!!!
DISCOUNTED GUEST PASSES
We are again offering the popular discounted guest passes. Passes are $35 and include a cart and may be purchased from June 11 thru June 18 inclusive. You must be in the group using your passes. Passes are good for play this year and expire at the end of the golfing season. Plan accordingly and see the pro shop to get yours.
Run for the Board
In October, we will have our annual meeting of the stockholders to elect four (4) members to your Board of Directors. New Board members will be elected to carry out the important work of operating the golf course. It is not too early to consider running for election. Anyone who has served on the BOD can tell you that it is hard, but rewarding work. I have listened to many opinions on how things should be done these past few years. It is now time for those with the time, ideas and dedication to step forward and lead, not just observe from the sidelines.
No Director shall hold office for more than two (2) consecutive terms. A Director shall be elected and serve for three (3) years. He/She must have at least three (3) consecutive years of membership and be a Member in good standing to be eligible to serve as a Director. He/She must also own at least one share of stock in the club to be eligible to serve as a member of the Board.
See you on the course.
Paul
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May 15th, 2017
From Ballston Spa Country Club
While still very early in the season, our membership numbers and dues revenue are starting to come into focus. We are looking at a very significant increase in our membership dues revenue. We have billed and / or collected upwards of $545,000 in dues. We continue to determine our final number of members who are not coming back but we are comfortable, at this point in time, to believe we will total between $530,000 and $540,000 in dues revenue. This would be our best year since 2011. We continue to sign up new members and should have a more definitive number next month. Our budget for dues revenue is $495,000.
Our corporate pass holder revenue is only slightly down from last year. If we are able to attract 2 more corporate pass holders, we will reach our revenue number from 2016. This revenue is part of our green fee and cart revenue line item.
The weather is certainly hurting our revenue. Fewer rounds, by both members and the public are having an impact but it is way to early to determine how significant it will be.
To date, the BoD has only approved 3 Friday tournaments in May through August. Last year we had 6, so this will result in a $12,000 to $15,000 decrease in our green fee and cart numbers. We did take fewer tournaments into account when putting our budget together. We monitor green fee and cart revenue throughout the season and perform analysis to determine how we are doing compared to previous years and make assessments about reaching our budget projections.
We do not have any significant expenses, to date, that are outside the scope of our budget. While we are planning to get the roof replaced on the club house, approximately 50% of the cost will be paid with an insurance settlement for damage to the roof during a wind storm this past winter. We hope to cover the rest of the cost within the house budget. We also received an insurance settlement for damage to the driving range netting. We plan to use in house / member resources to repair it and improve the netting within the settlement amount.
We did have some problems getting the restaurant / golf shop bills out this month. Our procedures for generating and printing the bills were missing a step but Julia was able to work with the software vendor to determine the error. The bills have been generated and were mailed on May 11th. We apologize for the delay in getting the bills to those members that we missed.
We have been working for the last week with an IT vendor on a proposal upgrading our Wi-Fi network. Our network is not the best and this vendor has provided us a proposal for upgrading some very old equipment and improving the network throughout the club. The Board will discuss the proposal and determine how to best proceed. More to come on this. We are also working with this vendor on upgrading our office infrastructure. We have been having problems with our data server which is why we can’t always view our online statements. Please be patience with us and as we try to get things working as quickly as possible. This vendor has been very responsive and we hope to get things fixed soon.
As always, if you have questions on anything that I have mentioned or you have been wondering about, please email me (tucats@nycap.rr.com) or talk to me when you see me at the course. I would be happy to provide you any info you need.
Sincerely,
Rick Funaro,
Treasurer |
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May Tournaments
June Tournaments
Most of you have seen the Golf Academy building, now in place behind the driving range. The interior and utility hook ups will be completed in the coming weeks. John Souza offers lessons, training sessions and club fittings so visit his website for details at www.johnsouzagolf.com.
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Membership Fox 5-2017
From Ballston Spa Country Club
Thank you to all our members and their guests who attended the 2017 “Kick – Off” Party. We had about 60 members and guests. It appeared everyone had a good time, so we hope to make this an annual event. Congratulations to the two raffle winners, Ellen Garelick and Megan Squires. Each won a round of golf for four including carts.
Below is the list of the newest members since the last Fox. Please welcome them to Ballston Spa Country Club. Our membership is approximately 250 + members. We currently have 12 Corporate pass holders and had 18 resignations. We are updating our business office management system, so a formal report is unavailable at this time. As you can see our membership is increasing. Therefore, be sure to call ahead for tee times and check the website calendar, so you can play golf when you want.
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May Report
From Ballston Spa Country Club
I’m sure everyone would agree that the weather this past month has been disappointing. The rainfall amounts this past month are above normal and temperatures are quite cool. Our course does not like a lot of rain. Most of the course is clay which can make for a lot of soft areas around the course. It makes it tough for us to keep everything mowed. Hopefully things will change and we get some warmer weather and get a break from the rain for a while.
The greens were aerified a couple weeks ago. This necessary biannual process went very well except for the rainy weather on the second day. Instead of back to back aerifying days we had a gap in progress. We had to finish the back 9 on Thursday. Oh well. Mother Nature isn’t always cooperative. The greens were deep tined and conventionally aerified with ¼ inch size tines. Plugs were removed and sand was applied to fill in the holes. Big thanks to the volunteers who helped to pick up the plugs. It is a tedious job but lots of hands make light work. We had enough volunteers to keep clean up right with the aerifyers. Thanks again. The greens turned out great.
Project day was a great success. All the flower beds were edged and cleaned. Weeds were pulled and plants were pruned. Finally all the beds were covered with fresh mulch. This is a huge project to undertake with our small maintenance crew while trying to keep the course mowed and playable. We just don’t have the time for this project. Big thanks to all the volunteers for their efforts. It helps us out and makes the course look great. The flower beds look amazing.
We are continuing with our bunker renovation project this year. #8 and #7 were selected for the 2017 season. We started with #8 this past week. Sod around the bunkers was removed. Some was saved to use on other parts of the golf course. In the bunker, the old sand was removed and the drainage was cleaned. Soon we will lay fresh bluegrass sod and add our bunker liner. The final step will be to add new bunker sand. We will start work on #7 in the fall. Another big thanks to the volunteers who helped with this project. I could not have done it without your help.
As I write this article we finally have a beautiful sun 70 degree day. The guys are on their mowers and the course is starting to dry out. We are finally getting caught up on our mowing. The nice weather has drawn a lot of people out because the parking lot was pretty full. As I drive around to check on things on the course, I must say that the golf course just looks amazing. The turf is green and full. The holes in the greens have filled in nicely. The fairways and approaches look like carpet. The new white sand in the bunkers looks awesome. The flower beds look like they have been taken care of by the Augusta crew. There will always be areas that will need improvement but overall we look very good. I just want to say thank you to my crew and to all the volunteers who are always there for me when I need them. You all should be very proud of what we have accomplished. |
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Grounds and Greens
From Ballston Spa Country Club
Thank you to all who volunteered and made project day a huge success. The beds were edged, weeded and mulched. The eight hole bunker renovation has started and by the time you read this new sod will have been put down.
The course is still drying out from all of the rain let's hope spring gets here soon. Please be careful with carts and avoid the really wet areas. Please replace your divots in the fairway and ball marks on the greens. |
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Golf Academy
From Ballston Spa Country Club
The Amish have visited Ballston Spa Country Club and have finished their project for the John Souza Golf Academy. It was quite the process to watch them put the roof on our building and do all of the finishing touches to the shell. As you can see, they did a tremendous job for us.
We will be finishing off the surrounding area of the building to have it fit in with the theme of what we provide here at BSpa. Thanks to all who have supported our efforts.
Golf Apps
I would like to remind all to download the 3 Golf Apps that we are using actively on a daily basis here. The 1st would be the GHIN App, the 2nd would be the Golf Genius App which we use for all of our Tournaments here at Ballston Spa, and the 3rd would be our own Ballston Spa Country Club App. This will keep all updated with the latest happenings at the Club, rewards program, GPS, electronic scorecard, as well as much more. If anyone needs any help with these, please let us know in the golf shop so we can help.
https://gallusgolf.com/DownloadApp/812/Ballston-Spa-Country-Club
Check our calendar to get all of the latest happenings.
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May Report
From Ballston Spa Country Club
There has been some recent talk of BSCC having a trivia night and the geniuses who came up with the idea have compounded their dementia by suggesting I host it. The perpetrators in this scheme don't know it but I am no stranger to golf trivia games.
A couple of years after we joined BSCC, The Amazing Max and I were part of a group of about 8 couples who hung out together at the club and each other's homes. We thought it would be a good idea to get together during the winter and decided to stage a Golf Jeopardy! Night at our house in February.
Max devised a system of cascading answer sheets, covered with dollar values and we had the same number of categories and answers that the real Jeopardy! had, even Double Jeopardy!!. It was 1993 and it was big news that Vanna White, Wheel of Fortune's famous letter flipper, was six months pregnant, so we figured I should dress like Alex Trebek and Max would be my assistant, the very rounded Vanna. She fashioned an appropriate dress and stuffed it to show off her baby bump.
We also incorporated an idea I think should be part of every game show in one form or another - we scrunched up newspaper into softball sized balls and taped them so they'd keep their shape. A few dozen of these were supplied contestants so they could express their feelings about the proceedings at appropriate moments by hurling them at anyone who had annoyed them. The downside of this idea was that we would come upon stray paperballs weeks after the annual sessions in highly unusual places.
As each couple arrived that night, they would glance at Max's midriff and either suppress a chuckle or look puzzled. The last to arrive were (let's call them) Vic and Victoria. Vic took one look at Max, smiled and congratulated her sincerely, saying what a wonderful thing this was. None of them had seen us for four or five months but Victoria and the rest of the women weren't buying it, although no one was openly questioning it, on the outside chance it was a real thing. I was thrilled that Vic was so ingenuously happy for us, although the thought of actually having a child in our mid forties made me reach for my cocktail.
Things went smoothly; balls were heaved, arguments over correct "questions" erupted and everyone was having a good time. But once the Final Jeopardy! question was given and the winner announced, things got serious. Max groaned and clutched her roundness, a look of shock on her face. I acted appropriately frantic and yelled something about the baby being on the way. Vic looked horrified.
I moved between her and the contestants and unzipped her maternity dress as she made loud labor noises. Reaching in, I pulled out two cloth dolls: one was Bert and one was Ernie from Sesame Street. Turning to the audience and holding the fully clothed siblings in the air, I proudly announced, "IT'S TWINS!"
I looked at Vic as I made my announcement. He was shaking his head, doing the traditional "OK, ya got me." look and laughing along with everyone else, thankfully.
We continued doing Golf Jeopardy! for a few more years but none was as memorable as the first. We've lost touch with almost everyone who was at that première event, an inevitable result of age and social mobility, but what hurts most is, the kids disappeared at some point and we have no idea where they are, the ungrateful twerps. |
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