Richmond Community Foundation Golf Tournament

Yesterday morning I received a phone call from Deborah , manger of resource development at the RYSA. I was going to tag along with her to the Richmond Community Foundation golf tournament, not by playing, but doing volunteer work. Deborah was great company and I very much enjoyed being around her. When we arrived at the Richmond country club we ate a hot-dog, grabbed our drinks and started looking for the person in charge, who was going to tell us what our duties for the day were.

They drove us out to hole 15, where we were in charge of beer and water. I don’t know if you’ve ever catered to golf-playing businessmen, but they tend to respond very cheerfully to free beers. Some even called it ‘aiming juice’. Deborah and I were very comfortable in the sun, chatting about volunteering, doing studies in foreign countries, etc. Because she’s hooked up in local school boards, I asked her to help me arrange some secondary school sight-seeing, and she kindly agreed to help me out. (More about that later today)

During the day, we swapped places with other volunteers, to make sure everyone wasn’t stationed at the same place for four hours. The next stop for us was the putting contest. Everyone who participated in the tournament was given a ticket with which they could get three free shots. It was possible to purchase additional shots (five bucks-a-pop) for those who felt compelled to give it another go. Only two people managed to actually put one of the balls when I was observing, whilst over forty dollars was made ‘selling’ shots.

For the last hour and a half I was put at the start of hole 14 (also named the teeing ground) where all the teams took their first shot. My hole, however, was special. If someone managed to make a hole-in-one on this 185-yard hole, they would get a cheque for 10.000 dollars. The price would be jokingly referred to by the businessmen as ‘a good start for when you’re buying me drinks tonight’. Some even said they’d hide the money from their wives or having spent the cash already. When the end neared, the combination of beer (which they had been drinking all day) and the burning sun kicked in, which made it difficult for most of the teams to try and hit the $ 10.000 shot.

When the tournament was over, the volunteers were each given a golf cart to pick up the stuff that was left behind on the court. As everyone who reads this probably knows, I’m not a big fan of driving cars, and was a little skeptical about these little buggies. I struggled with the reverse, the wheel and pretty much everyone that could go wrong, went wrong in the first minute. I almost hit a bag with expensive clubs! After that I got my act together and started making my way to hole 4. And I love to admit; driving is AWESOME! Especially when you get to speed around an empty golf court. I put on my new sunglasses as I conquered the little hills, dodged the trees and mud puddles and tried to race my fellow-volunteers. The only thing I did miss were arrows on the ground, bananas-bombs and blue shells to take out the leader .

In all, it was a great day. I’m very glad to have helped the community by selling tickets, watching for holes-in-one, handing out free beverages and picking up trash.

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