Why I Will Never Retire!

When high-powered executives and business people retire, a very small minority travel and enjoy their retirement. The vast majority still have those competitive juices and control issues and have to find another outlet. Some become members of the board of directors of their homeowners association and fight with the developer about the turnover of the community's golf course or with the individual homeowners over basketball hoops, satellite dishes or the like. Those executives that belong to private country clubs ands retire become involved in the management of the country club. Some become members of the club's handicap committee and send letters like the following to the club's golf members (This is a real letter. I could not make this up myself!):

Dear Member:

Due to the rampant cheating and sandbagging on the golf course [editor's note: I took a little editorial license and added this prefatory language because the Handicap Committee is too proper to say this], your Handicap Committee will be implementing a new handicap monitoring system. The Handicap Committee has worked diligently to produce a system that will insure the ongoing integrity of our handicap system while minimizing the reporting requirements of our members.

The new system, which is monitored weekly by the Handicap Committee, creates a computerized comparison of all rounds recorded on the daily tee sheet generated by the golf shop as compared to the rounds posted to the Arizona Golf Association’s (AGA) handicap system. If a round is reflected on the tee sheet but has not been posted to the AGA system, an exception is noted.

In the case of all exceptions, the member in question will receive an e-mail noting the date of the round along with a request to contact the golf shop in order to resolve the exception in a timely fashion. Barring extraordinary circumstances, the Handicap Committee expects that exceptions will be discussed with the golf shop and resolved within five (5) days of receipt of the exception notice.

If the matter is not resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the member and the Handicap Committee within such timeframe, a penalty score may be posted pursuant to Section 8-4 of the USGA Handicap System Handbook. Your Handicap Committee and the golf staff thank you in advance for your efforts in insuring the integrity of this game we play.

Your Handicap Committee