Tom King's Page

Thanks Tom! Happy to be here. Gonna need a lot of advice for my first tournament! http://www.theclayfoundation.org/events.php

Hi,

I wanted to ask you a question totally unrelated to golf, but the site wouldnt let me unless i joined......are you the one that about 3 or 4 years ago, advertised you had compiled all of Steve Marshall's sermons on a CD???  I would give my eye-teeth to get ahold of one!!! 

Hey, Tm. this Lorna with LIGA out of MIA. We change our event for Oct. 30 and want to be able to chang ethe event dateon our LIGA site, but we can't sign on now. We hadtrouble witour ema adress, how can we correct or up date this site. Maybe we should create a new website? Pleasehelp imediately. You can personally contat e at ls33150@aol.com. Thanks.

Hi Tom!

Thanks for checking up on us. The Asian American Association of New Mexico's 1st Annual Autumn Moon Golf Tournament is doing good. We have modest goals and as of right now, we have already achieved our profit objective just from sponsorships and sales of ad space in the program booklet. We're now trying to get more raffle prizes, meaningful gifts for the goodie bags and recruit up to 15 more foursomes to register. Even though I was in a Charity Golf Tournament Committee previously, I realize that things are very different when you're the one running it rather than just doing one aspect of it (I was in charge of publicity before). So, keep sending us positive thoughts.

thank you Tom, you can bet on me using the resources...I have done charity golf events in the past, but am always open to the best ways to get er done!

Not at all.
Though I'd like to fix the run-on sentence at the end.
"You will not hear complaints about cheating if you put at least one nice gift in the goodie bag every player receives just for registering and supporting your cause, award the winners symbolic prizes, and use all donations of real value to generate additional proceeds for the charity. Auction those off, or use them to help sell tickets for a prize drawing. Everyone will feel like a winner - who had a fair chance of being a big winner."

Tom,
Yep, I'm your friend. I liked you the second I read an excerpt from your book that said something like "just DON'T do it" about awarding valuable prizes to the winners of a charity golf tournament. A charity tournament is a flipping amateur event, and I can't believe how many morons post "advice" that publicizing big prizes for the winners will attract players.
What that does is attract cheaters and sandbaggers, and guarantee speculation, if not outright accusations and complaints, about rules violations, creative scorekeeping, team-stacking, unfair handicapping, or all of the above, at the banquet. Not to mention that such talk harms the charity's reputation, and makes it more difficult to recruit players the following year. That goes at least double if the "goodie bag" that all players receive was a plastic sack with some donated trinkets and coupons no one will ever use.
Amateur golfers who respect the rules play for the honor of winning. And planners need to realize that there is very little correlation between the value of supporters and donors to their cause and their golf skills or performance on the course on any given day.
You will not hear complaints about cheating if you put at least one nice gift in the goodie bag every player receives just for registering and supporting your cause, award the winners symbolic prizes, and use all donations of real value to generate additional proceeds for your cause by auctioning them off or using them to help sell tickets for a prize drawing. Everyone will feel like a winner - who had a fair chance of being a big winner.

Thanks for the welcome! But I'd put myself in the "considerable experience" category. I ran my first company golf outing back in the 1970's, was on my first charity tournament committee soon after - and have been in the business of supplying merchandise and services to corporate and charity golf events full time for almost 15 years now. Always happy to help newbies.
I feel for you on the spam - my blog attracted online casino spammers. Fortunately, I had it set so I have to approve all comments before they go up. Boom - right into the trash.