The Spinner Invitational - The Beginning

This post is way overdue. As such, I offer my apologies to the Board of Governors, The Executive Council, and to those dedicated souls who have called themselves Spinners for nearly 30 years. To make this right, here is their story.

In the '80s, the IRS was a hotbed of social activity. Sure, we scared the crap out of people just by showing up at their doors, snatched a few pay checks from little old ladies (who are much tougher than you may think), and upon occasion actually seized and sold other people's property to pay off their back taxes. It was an interesting but stressful line of work.

To alleviate this stress, we did many things. Partying was one. After-hours gatherings at local watering holes (I still remember Porter Street Station and the Lindell A.C.), softball games, picnics at Metro Parks, baseball games at Tiger Stadium, big time house parties - all were frequent occurrences. But one of the best team-building, stress-relieving, spiritually renewing activities for many of us were the golf outings. In some ways, they defined the social personality of the then Detroit/Southeast Michigan IRS operation.

These outings were special and very well attended, and for most included extended breakfasts catching up with work friends, 18 holes on a well-manicured course, and a rousing post-golf happy hour capped off with trophy presentations and a banquet approaching medieval gluttony. There was even an organization formed to schedule, administer and track the results of each year's events - the Internal Revenue Service Golf Association (or IRSGA).

At its peak there were five annual events as I recall, spread out from late spring to early fall. The first was the Data Center Open which was put on by a spring golf league sponsored by the old Data Center, a Detroit-based national IRS facility. That was followed by the Can-Am, an event jointly sponsored by the IRS Criminal Investigation Division and Revenue Canada and usually played at a favorite course just out of Windsor, Ontario. Then there was the Bigby, an outing started by and named after a beloved Collection Division Chief, Bill Bigby, and played at a variety of mainly west side courses, usually around mid-summer.

The oldest of all these outings, The Desedlo Open, followed in September. This outing, sponsored by the summer IRS golf league and named for a former Exam Division Chief, was usually played either at the Selfridge Air Force Base course or the Pontiac Country Club, whichever of them would have us at the time (owing to rumored disorderly behavior both on the course and/or at the banquet, the outing was at times banned from both of these courses). The Desedlo also had the distinction of breaking the local golf gender barrier when in 1979 a foursome of women was allowed to play. They were scheduled last off the tee and had to quit after nine holes due to darkness, but nonetheless made history. That foursome was made up of four Collection Division managers - Gloria Jean Boyd, Patty Cooper, Claire Brooks, and (you guessed it) one Nancy Louise LeRoy, who that next spring would become my bride.

This cycle of links revelry was then completed with a very popular scramble (teams of players with different levels of ability competing against each other) sponsored by staffers from the Collection Division and usually played at one of the downriver courses. All in all, each year was a grand golf ride with much fun, camaraderie and informal team building that promoted relations at work among key players from the various IRS divisions.

So what has all this to do with the Spinner Invitational? Everything. Due to some cosmic anomaly, I and my usual playing partners in those days were, shall we say, golf challenged. In previous posts, you've heard me describe my attitude toward golf. I would say that my bosom golf buddies (Al "The Bear" Morrison and Bruce "Sledge" Cooke) were of similar ilk. We loved the outings but were seldom in the running for any prizes, as the competition (unfairly, we felt) rewarded good golfers. But we (and our entry fees) were warmly welcomed by all, despite the character of our play.

Then things changed. It was during the Can-Am of 1988. I remember it vividly to this day. It had been a particularly difficult round of golf, played in brutal heat, that saw an impressive number of golf balls disappear from the confines of our foursome. Understandably, our scores reflected our performance. To add fuel to the fire, our entry fees for this event (and for most other IRSGA outings of that time) had been rising steadily, to of course buy fancier trophies for the good golfers. Suffice it to say, Bear, Sledge and Chico (my sports name - a story for another time) were not in the most gracious of moods.

And then it happened. When the person recording the scores for the tournament (who for purposes of this post will remain nameless) came to our card, he was overcome by the depth of our achievements and blurted out a few disparaging remarks about our (lack of) golfing prowess. And with more than one guffaw. Within earshot of us and several witnesses. We took umbrage. Way.

As we humbly huddled in the corner eating our overpriced, under-cooked steak, rubbing our aching and blistered fingers, lamenting our loss of little white orbs, and soothing our bruised egos, we began to simmer. Then boil. It was one thing to accept that the game we loved would always get the better of us. It was quite another for others who we deemed to be of doubtful lineage, to draw unseemly enjoyment from our plight. So as all oppressed peoples eventually do, we slowly turned our quiet rage into conviction, and vowed to each other never to be hungry for golf recognition again.

Being determined but cautious types, we needed a plan. So early the next week, I and my brother duffers met to begin sorting things out. We decided that for just a little more money and a modicum of effort, we could create our own golf outing. And the reduction in aggravation would be more than worth the investment. We started by picking a course far away from the IRSGA - Bay Valley, just north of Saginaw - and recruited a kindred spirit (Jeff "St. Jeffrey" DeNeen, who was working in the Saginaw IRS office at the time) to fill out our foursome. A couple of weeks later we headed up I-75, and as it turned out, into the future.

We had the best time golfing that day that we could ever remember (except for Jeff, who despite shooting an 86 remembers very little about that day due to a roughly 12-hour bout of Anheuser's Disease). We loved the course, which was challenging for a duffer but interesting and fair. It was a beautiful sunny day, and no one fell out of a cart (despite a fair amount of liquid encouragement - the beer cart girl did well that day). And we each actually had some good holes. Afterwards, we had a great dinner at a local pub and headed out on the 100-mile trip home sun-buzzed, renewed, and content. Now that's what amateur golf should be all about.

We had such a good time that day in 1988, that we decided to do it again sometime. And, we thought some of our other friends just might enjoy it, too. So that fall we formed the Spinner Board of Governors (named after our bowling team) and set about planning a full outing for 1989. But how do you get people interested in a golf tournament 100 miles away from home, that isn't really about golf? At least not about golf in the usual way.

Exclusivity seemed to be one idea that had appeal. Everyone likes to be asked. That's where the invitational part came up. We decided to only invite golfers that, well, we liked, and that generally shared our view of the true role of golf in the bigger picture of life. A little selfish, maybe. But, hey, it was our party (admittedly, this resulted in very small outings the first few years). To give form to this exclusivity, we ordered and mailed engraved invitations to the lucky few who survived the eligibility test.

Another challenge was how to generate a little friendly competition (we were boys, after all) that would give every participant a fair chance to win. So we came up with the now legendary prizes of the Turtle - most shots ending up in a sand trap, the Squirrel - most shots whose flight was affected by a tree (or other substantial golf course flora), and the Duck - the most shots coming to rest in water (non-casual, of course). With the heavy woods, many traps, winding river and ponds found at the Bay Valley course, even invitees with a degree of mastery of the game would have a chance to score one of these special awards.

To cap off the structure of the outing and solidify it as a true tournament, we created the Governor's Trophy. Honoring the Spinner spirit of participation over prowess, this trophy is awarded to the low net score of the day, calculating handicap at 100% of the difference between par and each golfer's average from previous Spinner Invitationals. This calculation represented a bit of a challenge the first couple of years, but with the right attitude and some fuzzy math, we muddled through. This approach to scoring has proved its worth over time as golfers at the middle and high end of the handicap spectrum have won about 80% of the tournaments. And the #1 seed (the golfer with the lowest handicap) has never won (poor babies).

But before I get into how the Invitational has unfolded and evolved through its 27 years, let me close this post and get it to press. That will correct my inexcusable tardiness in sharing the story of the Spinner Invitational's origins with those of you who have supported and/or suffered through it with us all these years. We'll explore the early days of Spinner history, complete with photo documentation, in my next post.

Until then, hit'em straight but watch out for those trees. They're not really 90% air.

Grosse Pointe Charles