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A Brief Tournament History It all began in 1988 when just prior to getting married, my brother Greg asked me what I wanted for a Bachelor Party. Ignoring some of the more traditional Bachelor Party venues, I decided I wanted to round up some friends and play golf. It was in early July, and we put together a group of 11 people and went out and played the San Clemente Municipal Golf Course. It was a hot day, and I remember just a few things about it in particular. We bought out the 12th position (actually Matt Gross did this) and we played 4, 4 and 3. Each foursome had a cooler in one (or in some cases both) of their carts, filled with oversized bottle of Beck’s beer (ahh... those were the days when courses were a little less strict with bringing contraband on the premises). Each team played one pink ball (in addition to the other three traditional balls), that was rotated from player to player each hole. The score of the rotating pink ball was the score of each foursome. Thus a tournament was born. There are many things I do not remember about the day. Who the exact eleven players were for instance. I know for sure that Greg was there as well as Matt Gross. I also believe Jack Harrington, Mark Corless, Bill Schack and Scott Wallace played too. I think Randy Jumper might have been there, but things became so hazy I could not even tell you who won the event. We had some rule that if you lost so many pink balls you were out of the competition. I think this happened to at least one of our groups. Too much sun, too many beers, and for sure, too much fun. So much fun in fact that I decided to make it an annual event. The following year I decided to make it a more formal tournament. We played a straight four man scramble at The Links at Monarch Beach with 27 players. The official name of the event was The Fear and Loathing Invitational. It was named after a book by Hunter S. Thompson that I had read in college (as well as the name of a softball team in Palo Alto managed by Glenn Raggio that I had played on for a few years). A light dinner party was held at my house afterwards. After about two or three years I brought my brother Greg in and we renamed the event the Clark Brothers Invitational. The tournament is run the same way today as it was back then, with the obvious subtle improvements we try to make every year. In 1995, after getting complaints from some of our patrons (many of whom fly in from out of state to attend our event) that they wanted more golf, we started what is now the Blue and Gold Cup. Being somewhat of a golf purist, and realizing that a scramble is not really "real" golf, we set up a serious match play event patterned after the Ryder Cup. In fact, in our first year it was called The Ryder Cup. This event is held on Friday before our main event, and consists of two teams – the Blue and the Gold. The name "The Blue and Gold Cup" has it’s origins in the fact the Greg attended Cal and I attended U.C.L.A. Both of these university’s utilize blue and gold as their school colors. So there you have it. We are committed to continuing our events and to improving them year after year. Many players come in and out of our tournaments, and we hope that they enjoy the consistency, camaraderie, and sportsmanship that we feel is an integral part of what we have created. We are always looking for ways to improve, and are open to suggestions. Paramutual betting has been considered for example, but we are concerned that the introduction of wagering into our events may bring with it some undesirable qualities that we feel have no place in our tournaments. Thanks for your participation and interest, and I hope you all continue to have very enjoyable rounds of golf out on the links.
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