On Saturday the season started with the Avajaiskisa... which meant that I was also playing in the first ever Kytäjä Club Tour event. I had conversations with many people this weekend about the KCT, it seems to have caught people's imagination and there were some interested spectators as I posted the KCT Order of Merit on the noticeboard in the clubhouse. There were 39 members who managed to earn KCT points from the Avajaiskisa - the top 10 teams all earned points, but one of those teams had only three players.
The Avajaiskisa is a team competition and as such (according to the KCT rules) the KCT points are
divided amongst the players in the team. For example - the first placed team earned 100 points, the competition format was "4 person teams", this meant that each player in the winning team received 25 KCT points.
Congratulations to all those who earned KCT points! For those players who did not manage to finish in the top ten, don't worry - there are 100 KCT points available for the winner of this months kuukausikilpailu which is played on the South East course and whoever finishes first will be leading the KCT at the end of the month no matter how many points he/she earned in the Avajaiskisa.
I will return to the topic of the KCT related results regularly in this blog over the summer in order to help you to get familiar with how it works in practice.
I have played at Kytäjä since 2005 but have never previously played in the kuukausikipailu... as a lower handicap player I did not feel that it was particularly meant for me, partly because it was played from the yellow (55) tees.
This year however, things are different.
There are two reasons for this, the first reason is because the rules now allow the players to choose which tee they want to play from - this is something that we changed in order to make it more inclusive and it takes advantage of one of the great things about golf - the handicap system (combined with the slope rating) allows for people to compete fairly against each other. If you play a longer harder course then your slope handicap goes up accordingly.
The second reason for this is the KCT. There are a lot of KCT points to play for in the kuukausikilpailu (each kuukausikilpailu round counts for the KCT and so does your overall kuukausikilpailu ranking for the season) and naturally I want to try and win some of those points.
So... on Sunday I played in the kuukausikilpailu for the first time ever... and at the same time I played my first round in the Miesten Eclectic competition.
After the long winter, with no competition rounds since the Audi Tour Final in Germany in September 2011, it was great to be able to play in 4 different competitions (Avajaiskisa, KCT, kuukausikilpailu, miesten eclectic) within 24 hours!
So... why not join in? The May kuukausikilpailu round can be played any time before the end of the month and the entries are open for all the matchplay competitions while for the men you can play your first round in the Miesten Eclectic whenever you like (the ladies eclectics start on 1st June)... there is a whole summer of enjoyable competitions just around the corner!
Andy
PS - some of the free prizes from the previous blog entry are still available. In order to win just find me at Kytäjä and ask for your prize - you deserve it if you have read this far.
PPS - I did some changes to the front page of this site to highlight relevant news, changes or other info - check out the new "Ajankohtaista" section.