The Jersey Jam

[The Ombudsman]

I had the privilege last weekend of playing in one of the longest running tournaments on the east coast - The Jersey Jam. The short course on the all female Douglass campus of Rutgers University was originally installed by Dan Doyle and Dan Roddick in 1978 - well before heavy plastic came along. The modified Jam layout has some par 4's and is a gorgeous course. A few things about the tourney were of interest: The tournamment was a 2 day event split into Am day on Saturday and Pro day on Sunday. Some players opted to play both days. Another thing of interest was that every player was required to keep score for the entire round. I liked this rule as there was no whining about the dreaded score card curse. Another thing that was well done was the TD placing responsibility on the players to make ALL decisions as a group. These two policies, in my opinion, were a great way to keep everyone involved in every facet of the rounds, and preventing any type of 'Rules Nazi' activity as we see all too frequently in the west. The Jam layout had some very technical holes with OB coming into play frequently. The fact that everyone was involved in the decision making process and scorekeeping made it a very enjoyable day. I played Sunday in the Grandmasters and finished in the middle of the pack. A double - O.B. 7 early in the first round was my undoing and kept me out of the cash. I will be back on the west coast Thursday and if all goes well I hope to play in the Seattle Duel Nature event this weekend!