Solid Waste Authority Holding 15th Annual Golf Tournament
March 27, 2015
In last week’s column, I mentioned that I would be happy to run announcements about upcoming charity fundraising golf tournaments held in the Cape Region.
The folks at the Delaware Solid Waste Authority wasted no time responding—as it were.
Michael Parkowski, Manager of Business Services and Government Relations, sent out a note regarding the DSWA’s 15th Annual Golf Tournament, to be held May 13 at Baywood Greens in Long Neck.
The tournament supports the John P. “Pat” Healy Scholarship program, which offers a renewable $2,000 scholarship to Delaware students who study Environmental Engineering or Environmental Science at a Delaware college or university. The scholarships are awarded based upon financial need, academic performance, community or school involvement, and the scholarship panel’s assessment of the candidate’s leadership ability.
Renewing the scholarship, for up to three years, depends on the student maintaining a 3.00 grade point average.
Pat Healy was appointed to the DSWA in 1994, and remained on the board until his death in 2003. The program has thus far awarded over $76,000 in scholarship money.
The tournament starts with brunch from 9 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., followed by a shotgun start at 11:00 a.m.
There are several sponsorship opportunities, and the DSWA will also accept donations of door prizes and/or items for goody bags (160 pieces minimum). Singles can play for $180, with twosomes forking over $350. Folks can also sponsor a complete foursome for $600.
If you’d just like to make a donation without playing golf, make your checks payable to the DSWA Scholarship Fund Golf Tournament, and send it to Jodie H. Sleva, Tournament Coordinator, P.O. Box 455, Dover, DE 19903. Contact Sleva if you have any other questions.
Bleeping technology
During a recent Sunday round at Rookery North, one of the members of my foursome busied himself between shots with his newest piece of technology, a GolfPad GPS device.
He said he was very pleased with it, and praised its accuracy and usefulness. What I couldn’t stop noticing was the noise it made—lots and lots of beeps and boops.
By comparison, my Bushnell Neo XS watch was nearly totally silent. It only beeped if I tapped a button to switch the face display for the distance-measuring device.
That watch, by the way, is very handy for early season golf, when a big block to the right or a pull hook puts you far from the fairway you were allegedly trying to hit with your tee shot.
Accurate yardages from unfamiliar places can make recovery shots much less daunting. Listening to the GolfPad, however, caused me to double-check the rules about using such devices in competition.
The United States Golf Association recognizes the information value of these tools, but limits their use accordingly.
A Local Rule must be adopted either for all play on the course or in a given competitive event. The device may only be used during such times for purposes of measuring distances, however.
If the device is capable of measuring other conditions that affect play, such as wind speed or gradients, that’s a rules violation meriting disqualification, “regardless of whether any such additional function is actually used.” Multi-functions devices, such as smart phones or tablets, may be used as distance measuring devices under Rule 14-3.
However, the rule also stresses that no features or functions may be installed on the device that, “if used, would be in breach of the Rules, whether or not they are actually used.”
If you have a device that takes slope into consideration to measure effective yardage, for example, that bit of data will be very handy during a casual practice round.
You just can’t provide yourself with that much information during a competition.