When the CGA decided to add another championship to its schedule for 2010, executive director Ed Mate had high hopes for the participation level in the Team Interclub.
“I’d be thrilled if we got 32 teams (for this year),” Mate said in October. “That would be more than a home run.”
Well, based on those expectations, the CGA did more than “go yard.” It hit for the cycle.
A year after an unofficial pilot program drew eight teams of men’s clubs for a season-long net match play competition, 40 signed up for the first official season of the CGA Team Interclub. In addition to drawing teams from all over the Denver metro area, there are also participating clubs from Colorado Springs (four), Grand Junction (three), Broomfield (two), Parachute, Longmont, Niwot, Elizabeth, Golden, Louisville, Estes Park, Castle Rock and Boulder.
“I was pleasantly surprised when we opened it up this year,” Mate said recently. “We did the pilot last year with eight teams and got very good feedback. I thought if we doubled that or even got 32 teams, that would be awesome. But I couldn’t be happier with how it turned out.”
The clubs are about halfway through the “regular season” portion of the event. With groups of four teams starting off with a round-robin among themselves, the top-performing club from each group will advance to the playoffs, which this year will feature 10 clubs. From August through mid-September, a single-elimination format will narrow the field to the top two teams. Those two will meet for the Interclub championship match on Sept. 25 at CommonGround Golf Course, which is owned and operated by the CGA and CWGA.
Other golf associations — Southern California, Philadelphia and Utah among them — have thriving interclub tournaments, and the CGA has taken the first step toward following suit. The association sent out information about the Team Interclub to each of the CGA member clubs in the fall, and roughly one-sixth of the clubs in the state signed up for the first official year of competition.
“The goal of the tournament is to provide member clubs — and particularly higher-handicap players — a CGA championship they can play in, and to promote more interclub play,” Mate said. “It’s proven to be extremely successful in other states that do it. Our goal is to continue to expand. Time will tell, but the response we’ve gotten from the first year to this year was certainly encouraging.”
Each club fields a team of 12 amateur players — the roster can change through the season — with six players competing at their home course and the other six on the opponent’s course. Two competitors from each men’s club make up a foursome, and they simultaneously play net singles and net four-ball matches. Each match is worth two points, with a win worth two, a tie one and a loss zero.
All of the groups are organized geographically, with, for example, all of the Colorado Springs clubs in one group, and those from Grand Junction and Basalt in another. Groups were also formed on the basis of public and private courses.
One side effect of the Team Interclub is that additional rounds of golf are played at the participating clubs. Each competing club is responsible for paying greens fees for all matches leading up to the championship finals at CommonGround. Though one team has withdrawn since originally signing up, there should end up being 66 team matches played this year, all involving 24 players. That means the tournament will account for 1,584 rounds of golf.
