2002 Highlights

The teams showed up bright and early for the AM Callaway at Grande Dunes fresh off the Third Annual Mayor's Cup (details on the Mayor's Cup page). After polishing off 50 or 60 breakfast sandwiches, the competition began. The captains' foursome started the event, and Tom Reardon rallied his troops with a blistering 102 in windy conditions. Greg DeRosa (said to be planting the seeds for a bloody coup) posted an 84 and ended up posting the low Callaway score of 73. This inspired Team Reardon to an overwhelming 83-53 margin of victory in the team scoring. Only the unselfish play of Mark 'Griswald' Wabschall and Paul Mooney could save Team Palumberi from a whitewash as they tied for high Callaway at 79.5 and brought home a point. As we headed to Barefoot for the afternoon Team Skins, the match was knotted at 11.

The afternoon brought the most highly anticipated match of this year's Final Fore ' Team Canada vs. Team Philly a/k/a 'The Brawl at Barefoot.' Both teams showed up wearing team-appropriate attire. Team Canada in cheesy t-shirts and Team Philly in the colors of their beloved Iggles. After a minor slashing and high sticking incident on the first tee, both teams settled into the match. No skin was scored until the par 3 third hole when a Gord Kushner slapshot ended an inch away from a hole-in-one. Team Philly answered back quickly with a skin on the 4th hole, but that would be the last skin awarded on the front. Like their countrymen before them, Team Canada sealed the gold medal victory with a par on the 10th hole and the six skins that went with it. A clearly shaken Philly duo immediately put a contract out on Team Canada and proceeded to win the back by 1 skin and salvage 1 point from the match. Taking a line out of the Eagles/Flyers/Sixers/Phillies post-loss interview script, Masino and Poole were heard yelling 'We're #2' and 'Wait till next year.'

In other matches, the team of Reardon and Brenneman built a huge 7-2 lead on the front only to have Palumberi and Wabschall come storming back on the back for a 7-2 margin and a split of the match. The Sheehy brothers posted a 2.5-.5 victory in their match with the team of Champion and Goudie. Champion was obviously shaken by talk that Andy Brenneman's tightly creased pants and matching argyle sweaters would supplant Joe as the best-dressed player on the course, and was seen placing several calls to his fashion consultants during the round. Greg DeRosa's game was showing the benefits of his new swing coach ' Ted, and he and Dave Williams posted a 3-0 victory over Brian Harris and Paul Mooney. The score at the end of day one stood at 18-16 in favor of Team Reardon.

The evening saw a break in Final Fore tradition as the line at Dick's forced us to move the annual Barefoot dinner to Chuck's Steak House. It was after dinner that the seed for victory was firmly planted by the sly Captain Palumberi. While Dave 'Morgan Freeman' Williams was attempting to make a left turn out of Chuck's, Palumberi, who had successfully infiltrated the Team Reardon car, quietly nudged Captain Reardon when he thought a turn could be made, causing Reardon to publicly question Chen's driving abilities. It was then that the cracks in team loyalty that had been growing since last year came to the surface. Rerouting, calls for taxis, threatened jumps from the car and general ugliness emerged and set the stage for Day 2.

Day 2 started with an early afternoon tee time and the Chicago format. The winds were howling which made the well-mounded course particularly demanding. Said Andy Brenneman after a particularly frustrating round, ' All I could think of when I was ready to hit were those two mounds.'

Even with the difficult conditions, there were some great individual performances and matches that went down to the wire. Brian Harris put up 50 Chicago points ' 10 Pars and 5 Bogeys to lead his team to a 2-0 victory. Yakich and Goudie countered with a 2-0 victory for the Reardon side. The power struggle on Team Reardon disrupted the Reardon/DeRosa pairing and John Sheehy and Ralph Masino capitalized to win a 2-0 victory. Dave Williams made a clutch putt for bogey on the last hole to salvage .5 points for the Reardon side. Team Palumberi captured Chicago by a margin of 5.5'2.5 making the score 21.5-20.5 in favor of Team Palumberi going into the final day.

With the Sheehy brothers and Paul Mooney needing to leave early to get in their practice rounds at Augusta, the rules committee had to rework the competitions for the final day. After much discussion and facilitation by noted arbitrator Dr. Adolph Coors, it was decided to move the highly anticipated 2-Man scramble to the AM round and conclude with a 9-hole match play in the PM. The captains got off by themselves and took on the heavy burden of making the next day's pairings, which would not be divulged until Sunday morning.

With an hour of sleep lost to the time change, a rather weary gang assembled at the Kushner Cabin at Man'O War for the announcement of the pairings for the 2-man scramble. Captains Palumberi and Reardon announced their teams and off we went to the first tee. The focus of the first 4 holes was surviving the cold, but once the sun got high in the sky, the golf rose to the level of an excellent elementary school match.

First off was the Kushner/Williams pairing vs. the Masino/Bill Sheehy duo. Kushner's Canadian roots gave his team the early advantage in playing under frigid conditions to win the point on the front by 3 strokes. With the greens thawing and the frost lifting, Masino and Sheehy battled back to halve the back, but it was too little too late against Team Reardon's diminutive duo. Next up for the Reardon 8 was the Yakich-Brenneman pairing vs. the Mooney-Griswald group. Yakich and Brenneman jumped out to a commanding 4 stroke lead after 9, but Mooney and Griswald came storming back on the back 9 to win by 5 and capture the overall match by 1 stroke ' match to Team Palumberi 2-1. The third match of the day had the most exciting conclusion in Final Fore history! After losing the front 9 by 2 strokes to the Reardon-Goudie pairing and being dead even on the back, the Poole-John Sheehy team approached the Par 5 18th tee knowing they needed a birdie to have any hope of winning the back. After the drives, John Sheehy hit an incredible 5-wood within 15 feet, while the Reardon duo was 15 feet away in 3. Sheehy then stood over his putt and drained it for an eagle while Reardon and Goudie barely missed their birdie putt and the match was halved. Sheehy, drained after carrying Poole around the course, immediately demanded more money from Captain Palumberi to play the afternoon 9. The team of DeRosa and Champion beat Harris and Palumberi 3-0 to send the match to the final 9 holes with the score ' Team Reardon - 28.5, Team Palumberi ' 25.5.

The final 9 holes would be match play worth 1 point per match with 4 points going to the team with the most cumulative holes won. The teams choppered over to the Wizard for the final round. Captain Palumberi, sensing a need to change team chemistry slightly, moved John Sheehy to team with brother Bill and reunited Team Philly. In typical fashion, Captain Reardon did nothing.

The Sheehy brothers, inspired by John's strong AM finish, prevailed over Kushner and Williams 3 holes to 2 in the first match of the afternoon, thanks to bombing three putts from greater than 20 feet (including one on the 9th hole that John hit while running to catch his flight). Mooney and Griswald paired to take Yakich and Brenneman 3 holes to 2, also. The Sheehys and Mooney then made a Normaesque departure via helicopter to catch their flight for Augusta. The next match got somewhat ugly as the long simmering Masino-Goudie battle of the gimmies came to a head in what will go down as the Good-Good Goudie match. Team Philly prevailed for a 4-1 victory over Reardon and Goudie ' evening the match at 28.5 with the last foursome on the course. DeRosa and Champion prevailed in the final match 5 holes to 2, however when the total holes were tallied, Team Palumberi held a 12 hole to 10 advantage.

Final Match Score: Team Palumberi 32.5, Team Reardon 29.5.

The ugliness which had been festering since the player arrivals bubbled over in a fit of utter disgust when Mark 'Bart Maverick' Wabschall, after agreeing to Robert Goudie's baseball game, where 3s, 9s AND 2s were wild, was shunned by Robert when playing Wabschall's double modified Cayman Islands Criss-Cross. Wabschall went on to politely explain that there are no 2s anywhere in the game of baseball ' to which Goudie replied that he was doing his part to speed up Doubleday's game by ensuring anyone who didn't have 5 Aces after 6 cards would be forced to fold.

As we await Final Fore 2003, we can anticipate a highly competitive match which this observer believes will finally involve punches being thrown.