Date: 6/30/2025  

From: Frank Alexander

CHIP SHOTS

SPELL JULY G-E-N-E-V-A

    WAIT IS OVER – Spit shine the clubs, wash your balls, fill the coolers and pack your vehicle. Geneva is a few weeks away and before long, we will be counting the days. I thought Geneva would never get here. The winter was brutally cold and lasted long after Easter Sunday. Spring was extremely wet. I shuffled my walk from the 18th green to the 19th hole in Fred Sanford form after multiple rounds of cart path only. Pagnanelli’s pedometer nearly rebooted on its own one day on the Kentucky golf trip. Lately, hell doomed us to a display of her climate with temps closing on 100 degrees and humidity well above. We overcome Mother Nature’s chutzpah’s every year and we will do so once more. Two years ago, rain washed out Saturday’s round. We passed out umbrellas for gifts that season. Good news! Umbrellas are not gifts this year. Geneva was played amid drought conditions in 2024. We should not have to worry about that either. No matter what the weather gods bestow on us, we overcome. WE rally behind the famous motivational speech of John “Bluto” Blutarsky in Animal House when he said, “Nothing is over until we say it is. Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor?” This year’s weather could have Geneva in Augusta National condition by the time we converge. Despite the roller coaster climate ride, the different Committees have diligently prepared for our weekend. Some volunteered services not expected. I caught word that Don Rutherford spent many hours refurbishing and mending the cracks on the 25-year-old Gavin Cup. Sister Gavin would be proud. His next project is to fix the crack in the Liberty Bell.

    SQUABBIT READY – The hardest working man the past six months has been Ron Szymczak, head of our IT Department. His tireless efforts demanded many manhours developing a Geneva program for the Squabbit app that will pay dividends calculating a quicker and more precise scoring procedure. Teaming with Don Jander, the Sunday Tour Commissioner, Ron tested the efficiency of Squabbit, and it works. The Sunday Tour deals with

skins and a net medal tournament. Geneva requires more. The Skins games, Gavin Cup, Best Ball, and Scramble must all be programmed with the appropriate handicaps. Ron is on it. He has taken the bull by the horns. I have an inclination that if Ron was a matador, the bull would have no chance, and we would be eating bull steaks at the Commissioner’s Dinner. Look how he demolished that inflatable rooster last year. Many tests inside his scientific laboratory have given him the confidence of Squabbit’s success. All it will take to enact Ron’s program is a cell phone. One player from each foursome needs to enter the scores on each hole. Wah-La! Squabbit calculates the results. Can it get any easier? The instructions on how to access Squabbit will be forthcoming.

     PRACTICE ROUND – As customary, there will be an organized practice round of golf as well as an unorganized practice day for alcoholic consumption. Many can handle four days of golf, not me. Others have trouble consuming spirits for three straight days. Szymczak did not make it past the first night last year. This paragraph is about the practice round of golf. Shawn Dorn booked six tee times at St. Denis starting at noon on Thursday, July 24. A few spaces are available if interested. They play a pot game (not to be misconstrued with the Doobie Brother’s pot game) and skins. Feedback from this round is always important in setting the groundwork for Geneva’s first day. The difference in yardage and slope between the up tees and middle tees makes course set up more challenging. I intend to scout the track soon and will make an executive decision on which tee markers we will play. The input from my own experience and the thoughts from the practice round will finalize how we attack St. Denis. Together, we will get it right. If you would like to join Shawn’s group of merry hackers at St. Denis, Shawn is your contact. He is in charge.

    LET’S PLAY – Here we go! The final preparations are being ironed out as Geneva days draw closer. Here are a few reminders to keep you posted on what to expect. The cost for all events is $240. Only cash is accepted. Friday’s green fees are the responsibility of each individual. Saturday and Sunday plus all Geneva amenities will be covered by the $240. Kerry Joyce, Keith Boggess, Michael Badea, and Tom Black return to defend their BEST BALL CHAMPIONSHIP. The draft at the Commissioner’s Dinner to draw teams to challenge their crown will be conducted from a pool of “B” and “C” pickers. Unfortunately, Mini-Legend Jerry Graves will be unable to join partner Michael Badea in defending their Gavin Cup title. The shoulder has yet to mend enough to swing a club. How disappointing for the Little Guy’s wife, Betsy, who will have a void atop her living room mantel where this lovely piece of hardware stood proud proclaiming her husband’s excellence on the Geneva turf for three days last July. A new partner will be drawn for Michael on Thursday night when the Gavin Cup teams are constructed at Lumpy’s Hide-A-Way next to the Summertime Inn. All are welcome to participate. Blaise Plageman runs this operation. New this year, Friday’s Skins will be a handicapped event with each golfer catching half his total shots to allow more players a chance to pocket a Skin. Half handicaps prevent any player from catching two strokes on any hole. Much planning and consultations have occurred in the past six months to move Geneva smoothly along. No doubt pitfalls will pop up. They do every year. But we overcome. One lesson I learned during my tenure as Geneva Commissioner is that man makes his plans, but God determines the steps and most often, they follow different paths.

Date: 6/30/2025  

From: Frank Alexander

    Back in 2015, I organized a golf trip with my closest friends to Myrtle Beach. 6 of us piled in a van and made the 17 hour drive from Toronto for an absolutely unforgettable weekend.

    While playing golf in Myrtle we kept seeing funny looking squirrels with long bushy ears. After a few visits from the beverage cart, we started calling them squabbits (a mix between a squirrel and a rabbit).

     For some reason the name stuck and we began referring to the tournament as The Squabbit Invitational. Fast forward a couple of years and the tournament had become an annual tradition.

    Since it was mostly the same guys playing every year and none of us kept an official handicap, I wanted an informal way to keep track of everyone’s handicap to make the competition more fair. I also wanted a way to have a live leaderboard so that players could see exactly where they stood during every round, instead of having to wait until the end of the tournament and all the scores were calculated.

     After testing out a few apps and websites that offered some of this functionality I realized that there wasn’t a good solution that was easy to use and not too expensive. Being a software engineer, I decided it would be a fun project to try and build something myself.

    So after a year of working on it, it was ready for our next Squabbit Invitational. I also realized that it wouldn’t be that hard to make it usable by anyone so I decided to launch it on the app stores as well.

     In the first couple of weeks it only got a few downloads, but people really liked the app. Users kept asking for more and more features and soon enough I found myself dedicating all of my free time working on it. The app initially launched with only Strokeplay as a playable format, but soon I was adding everything from Ryder cup to Skins and I learned how vastly complex different golf tournaments can be.

    Fast forward 5 years and Squabbit is now being used by hundreds of thousands of golfers across more than 40 countries. It has grown so much bigger than I ever could have imagined and I am more excited than ever for what’s to come!

P.S. for all those unsure of the pronunciation, Squabbit rhymes with rabbit, it's not Sqwahbit