An Anthology of RSG Events

From the perspective of Dave Tutelman

This "anthology" is a collection of postings, the first several being to the newsgroup rec.sport.golf (colloquially known as RSG; it is the Usenet newsgroup for golf). Most of the postings are my own (I'm Dave Tutelman), but I have included those of others where I felt there was something substantial to add.

In late 1997, I temporarily lost my netnews access and was gone from rec.sport.golf for a good half-year. And it was a good half-year. When I got netnews access back, I lurked a bit and realized how low the signal-to-noise ratio was in that newsgroup. (Sorry for the engineering terminology, but I am an engineer. What I mean is that there were far too many off-topic rants and posts by know-nothings who were fond of seeing their own name on the net. I'm sure some folks feel that way about me. That's OK; that's what open access is about.)

So I never posted to RSG again. Didn't have to! Thor (Dave Collard) had started his own mailing-list-based forum -- and a web site -- called RSG-Ohio, that covered the RSG events in the northeast, and occasionally events that northeastern golfers traveled to. That forum seemed to be better focused than the RSG newsgroup, so I have hung out there ever since. As a result, the writeups since late 1997 appeared on RSG-Ohio but perhaps not on RSG. (Some of them were cross-posted to RSG by others, mostly Thor.)

In September 2003, Mark Koenig mentioned in RSG-Ohio:

Someday, someone will write a book about how all of this came to be and what great lifetime friends were made from all of it. I can only hope to live long enough to read it.

Mark Georg responded:

If only there was some retired guy in NJ who had a way with words and nothing else to do this winter...

I thought about asking Mark to elucidate. Then it occurred to me that I was retired and living in New Jersey. Of course, I have plenty to do -- even in the winter. But two out of three is a pretty good match, so I assumed he meant me. I wasn't too keen on writing a complete history, but I had already written much while it was happening event-by-event. That is how this web anthology came to be.

Thing you'll need to know

Before delving into detail, here are a couple of background/reference pieces that may help you understand some of the writeups:

The writeups include a lot of nicknames, and sometimes they are not explained nor even identified. Here's a list of the dramatis personae.
Every year at RSG-Ohio, and occasionally at other RSG events, we play using a format called Match Play Madness or MPM. It's a hoot, but you need to understand what it is to appreciate the stories.

In the beginning

Although I had participated in rec.sport.golf since the late 1980s, I had never met an RSGer face to face until 1995. I had exchanged lots of email and even a little paper mail (Guy Cooper -- Coops -- and I had shipped some paper back and forth). But nothing in person. And that was very much the norm. There had never been an RSG event to cause us to come away from our keyboards and actually meet for real golf.

In 1995, Coops' wife was the alumni coordinator for Elizabethtown College. Her biggest responsibility in that post was organizing the alumni weekend in June. Every year, alumni weekend included a Sunday afternoon golf tournament. And every year the golfers complained that it ought to be at a real golf course, not a cow pasture. (Exaggeration perhaps, but the alum that Julie delegated this to obviously didn't know a golf course when he saw one.) So in '95, Julie asked Guy to pick a course. He picked Hershey Parkview, and arranged enough tee times and a shotgun-start tournament. As the time approached, they hadn't filled out their tee times, so Coops issued a general invitation over RSG for anybody who might want to join them.

I lived within a 3-hour drive, and thought it might be fun to meet some real, live RSGers. Also, Coops and I were in email discussions about a set of irons Coops had built at the time, so meeting him in particular seemed a good idea. Stephen Payne from Washington also attended. Anyway, Hershey '95 is the first time I know that an invitational was announced over RSG and people showed up.

Article on RSG-Hershey '95

The movement was catching on. It was less than two months before John Griffin invited folks for an Indiana RSG event.

Article on RSG-Indiana '95

A few months later, several folks got the bright idea of a nationwide RSG weekend in March. On March 9, 1996, there were three RSG events in different parts of the country: the Bay Area, Texas, and North Carolina. Drive to your nearest RSG event, and meet some folks for golf. Coops, Steven Payne, and I agreed to drive down together to Greensboro, NC.

Article on RSG-Greensboro '96

In January 2003, Mark Georg posted a few reminiscences of this event on RSG-Ohio.

I recently (May 2004) came into possession of John Luce's writeup as well -- and I reveal the mysterious "karma".

The rest of 1996

Hershey was such a success in 1995 that RSG was invited back to the Elizabethtown alumni tournament in 1996 -- and attended in somewhat larger numbers than the previous year. Coops expanded the weekend for RSG to encompass four rounds over the two days, not just the one, which did more than anything else to encourage attendance.

Article on RSG-Hershey '96

Thor enjoyed Hershey so much, he decided to host a similar event in his hometown, which is how RSG-Ohio got started. In fact, as I remember it, Thor had already decided RSG-Ohio was a good idea. One of his motivations for attending Hershey was to drum up enough interest in RSG-Ohio to cause people to travel there. I know I would not have been willing to trek all the way out to Columbus without that impetus. Thor made sure his longtime best friend Fred Stluka was at Hershey, and made it a point to introduce us. Fred lives less than two hours from me, and we have been sharing the 9+ hour drive to RSG Ohio almost every year since then.

Article on RSG-Ohio '96

There are a couple of additional articles available:

Thor's own account of the weekend.
My article about the golf clubmaking part of the trip, the visits to Dynacraft and GolfWorks.

The circuit

The idea caught on so well that RSG events began springing up all over -- and at least one of the existing events became an annual thing. By the turn of the century, I had blocked out my own calendar every year to hold:

A weekend around Super Bowl for winter golf somewhere in the Carolinas.
The last weekend in April for Mark Georg's RSG Pittsburgh.
Sometime in early June for Coops' RSG Hershey, which became an annual event.
Sometime in mid September for Thor's RSG Ohio -- generally considered "the most schmajor schmajor" of RSG.

That's my personal "circuit". But, no matter where you live in the USA, there are events within some sort of driving distance. Just offhand, I can think of:

RSG Cincinatti (John Pflum schedules it to be the hottest weekend of the summer)
RSG Northwest (hosted by the Scott and Kelly Sewell)
RSG Wisconsin (Mike Dalecki)
RSG SoCal (Bob and Brenda Patterson)
RSG Atlanta (not annual, sort of "as needed" -- hosted by Randy Brown)

I know there are more (Texas? St Louis? Michigan? Bay Area?) but I'm not certain what they are.

Anyway, here are a bunch of writeups for the ones I attended, plus a few more. Click the link in the box for the article.

1997	Fripp-Out For a few of us, the golf season started in January. Brent Hutto of South Carolina, whom we had met at RSG-Greensboro, had won a radio-show call-in contest; the prize was a golf weekend at Fripp Island. Fripp is a resort, mostly a summer resort, off the South Carolina shore just north of Hilton Head. It was a foursome prize, so he invited some of the RSGers whose company he enjoyed. We had a great time, and a nearly-annual tradition started.	Pittsburgh Late in the year (in November) Mark Georg invited us to Pittsburgh to play a notorious course that was featuring a steep off-season discount. Quicksilver had been on the Senior Tour, until those candy-asses decided it was too physical for them. (Hey, those guys have caddies and most of them ride anyway; what are they complaining about?) We played Quicksilver on Saturday and Butlers on Sunday. This get-together turned out to be the start of another annual event, RSG-Pittsburgh. It is now held the last weekend in April rather than the late Fall.	Hershey The year of the Ryder Cup format.	Ohio I didn't get to RSG-Ohio in 1997, but here are writeups from: Thor Chuck
1998	Pinehurst In 1998, we didn't have a Fripp trip, because John Luce organized a golfing weekend in Pinehurst for the RSG crew. Here's the story.	Pittsburgh	I think RSG-Hershey did happen in '98, and I attended. But no writeup is available.	Ohio Once again, the disk crash ate my writeup. Here is Thor's.
1999	Fripp-Out	Pittsburgh ... and a bonus article by Thor	Hershey	Ohio ... and a bonus article by Thor
2000	The Millenium Fripp-Out Bonus article by Mark Georg		Hershey Article by Thor	Ohio Articles by: Thor Mark Georg John Pflum
2001	Fripp-Out Bonus articles by: Brent Hutto Terry Easton Thor	Pittsburgh		Ohio Thor wrote the main article. Then there are the bonus articles: A collection of email followups to Thor's article. Another email thread, "10 Things I Learned at RSG-Ohio".
2002	Fripp Tripp I know there was a Fripp Tripp 2002. I know Mark and Grace Georg were there as were Brent Hutto and Terry Easton and myself. I believe I did a writeup. But I can't find one at all, so it will have to go unrecorded.	Pittsburgh	Hershey	Ohio Again, I can't find an article on RSG-Ohio 2002. I know I attended (I even saw myself in a couple of Jeff Tindall's photos), but no writeup.
2003	Pinehurst Snow-Out There was no Fripp-Out in 2003. Only three of us (Brent, Terry, and I) were interested, and we felt we'd like to try something different since the Fripp Island courses had been getting residentially overbuilt. We made reservations in Pinehurst, but got snowed out. It was an unusually snowy winter, and we got in zero rounds of golf in Pinehurst.	Pittsburgh Bonus: Dave Osborne on The Cap Match	Hershey	Ohio Bonus: Thor's writeup. Email followups to the event, including the now-traditional "10 Things I Learned" theme.
2004	Pinehurst Terry and I had rain-checks to cash in from last year's ill-fated Pinehurst trip. Much of the gang was planning to go to Scotland and was saving their golf money and vacation time. So the winter event was small and sort of private. Brent joined us at Pinehurst, but nobody else was interested. Bonus article from Brent	Pittsburgh A lot of the regulars were going on the RSG-Scotland trip, which starts just a week after our usual Pittsburgh date, so the Pitt turnout was light -- and a week earlier than usual. Bonus photos from Terry	Hershey Bonus: Email writeup from Coops. Thor's reply to Coops' writeup. Jon Green's writeup.	Ohio
2005	South Carolina Bonus article from Brent	The day after I returned from Pittsburgh-05, I left on a week-long business trip -- the big shoot for a golf video for which I was the screenwriter. So I never got around to a writeup for Pitt-05. But... Mini-Pitt Since we had a light turnout for Pittsburgh in the Spring, we had a mini-Pitt in the Fall. Well, that's not really why it happened, but happen it did...	Hershey This "writeup" is a collection of excerpts from the email about the event.	Ohio This is the tenth anniversary of RSG-Ohio -- the most schmajor schmajor on the RSG itinerary. We have bonus writeups from: Thor himself. Bret "Annika" Douglas. John Pflum.
2006	South Carolina	Pittsburgh	Hershey Also a couple of bonus writeups: Jon "Mr 10" Green's memoirs A Top-ten list from host Guy "Coops" Cooper	Ohio This was an unusually good event, and lots of people had lots to say about it. Here are some bonuses: Thor's writeup. Rob Pyle's writeup. Kelly Newell's writeup. A list of things learned from vander Pflum. A set of reminiscences from Coops. Don't worry if you only understand about half of the references; that's par for the course. Various short lists from Neal Bell, John Griffin, and Steve Hall.
2007	South Carolina	Pittsburgh	Hershey	Ohio Bonus articles: Thor Mike Dalecki Deb Rich John Pflum Brief vignette by Mark Georg
2008		Pittsburgh	Hershey

Events not in my "circuit"

Article on RSG-Cincinnati 2006

Bonus article by Thor.

Last updated July 1, 2008