23rd Annual Savage Open

Camillus Hills Golf Club—October 7th 2017

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Winning Team

Total Score: 156

  • Tom O’Connor
  • Chad Miller
  • Rick DiFiore
  • Peter Savage

Skins

  • Rick DiFiore (3) – Birdie on hole 8, 11 and 14
  • Tim Erwin-Birdie on 13
  • Peter Thorpe- Birdie on 16
  • Jeff Moro- Birdie on 15
  • Connor Byrne- Birdie on 6
  • Larry Mac Dowell- Birdie on 7

Summary of Thoughts on the 2017 (23rd) Savage Open Weekend (10/06/17 to 10/08/17)

By: Mike Savage

I’m not sure how many of these Savage Open summaries I’ve written over the course of the 23 Savage Opens played to date. I know I did not play in the first 2 Opens in 1995 and 1996. Thanks to my wife Chrissy I played in the 3rd Open in 1997 and I don’t think I’ve missed one since. And I do enjoy doing these writeups because it allows me to relive all the great highlights of the Open weekend. Here are my highlights of the 2017 Savage Open.

  • As always, the Savage Open weekend starts with the pre-golf party Friday night at Peg (Savage) and Tim Byrne’s house. The weather was great so their deck got some good use. There was plenty of good food, and Tim had all the beer coolers perfectly iced. Thanks to you both. Considering that we had a record number of golfers I thought the crowd was a little light. But then again many of us are not able to party late into the night and still be ready for an 8:30 AM shotgun start the next day like we did 23 years ago.
  • There was a small gathering at the party of the Notre Dame alumni club, consisting of Connor Byrne and his girlfriend Dana and my old buddy Don Geisser. Donny graduated with an engineering degree from Notre Dame in the 70s, and he is probably the biggest ND fan I know. Case in point, Don is retired now and lives in Rhode Island, yet he is a ND football season ticket holder and he has attended all the ND home games this year and a few away games. That’s a fan!
  • As Dad was leaving the party Friday night, Peg asked him when he wanted her to pick him up and bring him to the Camillus Golf Course in time to see everyone before the 8:30 AM shotgun start. Dad said 7:45 AM, and then added that if it’s raining in the morning don’t bother picking him up. Now that weather forecast at that time for Saturday morning was warm and clear. But after living in Syracuse for 92 years Dad has learned to be skeptical of weather forecasts.
  • Sure enough we all woke up Saturday morning to, you guessed it, rain. But as the Irish would say “tis a soft rain that’s fallin”. Many golfers noted that it wouldn’t feel like a Savage Open if there wasn’t a little rain. Everybody showed up in appropriate rain gear and we all teed off without a hitch. (More about Dad’s start later). By late morning the rain had moved off and we were left with a beautiful Fall warm and sunny day.
  • We had a record I believe of 56 golfers for the Open. We had 10 Savage’s play, including Kathy Savage who played in her first. There was some great golf played, and some of the highlights were:
    • Larry MacDowell, a surprise guest from Florida of brother Jim, who had never laid eyes on the Camillus course before, shot the lowest round of the day with a 76. Jim didn’t know Larry was coming until that morning. And Jim introduced Larry to everyone as “The Ugly American”, a nickname he gave Larry on one of their golfing trips to Ireland. Larry didn’t seem to mind the nickname, almost seemed to relish it
    • Bryan Savage was the only other player to shoot in the 70s with a 79
    • Nancy Savage beat 27 golfers in the field, including yours truly
    • There were 8 skins won, all by birdies. My old boss (now retired) Rick DiFiore won 3 skins on Holes 8, 11 and 14. The other skin winners were Tim Erwin on Hole 13, Peter Thorpe on Hole 16, Jeff Moro on Hole 15, Connor Byrne on Hole 6, and Larry MacDowell on Hole 7.
    • And a special shout out to Rick DiFiore. Rick shot an impressive 80, but more impressive was his 6 birdies! And there were no crazy chip ins, Rick played well and it was a pleasure to watch it up close because Rick was in my playing foursome. And as he did in years past, Rick gave me his $105 in skin winnings and insisted I put in on the bar at Swallows for our group. You’re a good man Rick, and when you see Rick next be sure and thank him for the free drinks.
    • The longest drive was won by Tyler Tortanado, who said he only played one other time this year. So much for the old practice makes perfect adage.
    • And the most important prize was the Team Best Ball contest won by the scoring foursome of Pete Savage, Rick DiFiore, Tom O’Connor and Chad Miller with a score of 156. Those 4 names will be etched on the Savage Open trophy, congrats to them. And I insisted that Rick keep his $60 for being on the winning team because he certainly earned it. In 2nd place with a score of 159 was the scoring team of Gary Savage, Larry MacDowell, Aron Kolb and Jim Swan.
    • A quick note about one of the winning team members, Chad Miller. This was Chad’s 1st Savage Open, and he is the middle son of Steve Miller, my co-worker on the Onondaga Lake cleanup project. Steve made his first Open, and played with his wife Cathy and sons Chad and Troy. Steve and I won the OBG Monday Night golf league at Green Lakes this year. I didn’t do anything to brag about at this year’s Open, so I thought I’d throw this little tidbit in here.
  • The Camillus Golf Course was in excellent condition, and they had 2 great improvements for us this year. The newly rebuilt clubhouse is beautiful, with a nice big deck, a roomy and naturally lighted main room and bar, big clean bathrooms, etc. And they also had recently installed a new computerized scoring system, with instant displays on their large screen TV of all the results of our tourney. That gave Jim and Gary Savage and Brian Donegan and Jim Swan a coveted couple of extra hours of bar time whereas in prior years they would be entering all the scores on a poster board by hand and then analyzing the boards and determining all the best ball team scores and skins manually. Great job by the course, we’ll be back next year.
  • After a lengthy 19 hole at the course, our group headed down to Swallows for pizza, wings and adult beverages. The food was great and never seemed to run out. And for a special treat, Peg brought down the giant cookie birthday cake for Peg and me for our shared birthday on Oct. 8th that Dan and Kathy brought to Peg’s Friday night but never got opened. The Ugly American had a hilarious photo bomb moment in the picture of Peg and I getting ready to cut the cake.
  • A few hardy souls stayed on at Swallows, and I had a great conversation with Rob Ganley and Jim O’Neil, who both seemed to be permanently fastened to their bar stools. Mike Moran also joined our table. A good time to catch up with old friends.

In closing, these are my 3 top memories of this year’s Savage Open:

  1. The first one is easy. On the morning of the Open and as the rain was falling, I figured Dad wasn’t going to make the start. I was all ready to tell the group that if Dad was here, we decided he shouldn’t hit a ceremonial 1st drive because in years past he hit it so well that many of the other golfers felt bad that they were outdriven by a 92-year-old and it messed up their whole golf game. We thought Dad should hit a ceremonial 1st putt instead. But as it turned out even though it was raining Dad did show up, and he said he didn’t want to hit “no stinking putt” and he wanted to hit a big drive. Our whole group gathered around the 10th tee and Pete teed up Dad’s ball.

    After one practice swing, Dad hit a beautiful drive high and far and right down the center of the fairway. It was glorious to see and everyone congratulated Dad on his great shot. Another priceless moment in the Savage Open legacy.

  2. The Savage Open means a lot to our family and although it may sound weird to some, for many of us it is our favorite holiday. It is the one time all year when we can gather our generations of family at one place and time and enjoy being together. And whereas for many the July 4th, Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays have mixed family obligations, no one else has conflicting plans for the 1 st Saturday in October so most of us can make it each year, which is awesome.
  3. And lastly I have a special story to share. Our son Matt who lives in Fort Lauderdale couldn’t make it to the Open this year. He had to make up for lost time when Hurricane Irma roared through that area. My son Kevin decided he would travel to Lauderdale the weekend after the Open and play golf with Matt since they missed playing together up here. My wife Chrissy then said I should fly down and join them and have a nice father & sons golf weekend. Brilliant idea! So I did and played 3 rounds of golf with Matt and Kev on 3 different courses around Lauderdale and had a terrific, unforgettable time. On our last round all 3 of us finished in a dead heat with 85s. I’d like to point out that the 2 of them had to shoot 38s on the back nine to tie me, but that sounds too much like bragging. I owe Chrissy big time for that outing. On the Saturday of that weekend, Kevin and I and 2 of his Georgia Tech friends went to the GT vs. Miami football game at the Dolphins Hard Rock Café stadium. As we were heading to our seats, we mistakenly entered a vacant private luxury box. An older Hurricane fan followed us in. We looked around and the older gent said “You know what they say, act like you belong there”. We laughed and then went to our seats down below the box. As I was starting to sit down, I looked back up to the box and the older gent was there with his wife and another couple and he gave me the sign which I interpreted to say “Why not?”. So I told Kev and his buddies to come on and we went back to the box. And for the rest of the game we enjoyed the game from our private box on the 15 yard line. We introduced ourselves, Ward was the older gent and George was his buddy. Kev and his GT tech heads figured out how to get the TVs on showing different games of the day, cranked down the air conditioner, we found the empty fridge hidden under the cabinets with full ice chest and we all made ourselves perfectly at home. At halftime Ward decided we should have a plan in case someone comes in and wants to know what the hell we’re doing there. A sign on the wall said the box belonged to AMR Corp. Ward decided I should be the CEO and be our spokesman. I said fine, and immediately named Ward Director of Marketing. My thought was if confronted I would start the conversation and then turn him over to the Marketing Director. Then everyone else wanted a position. Ward’s buddy George was made Director of Operations (he was a house builder from Naples), Kev was made Director of IT, etc. We had a million laughs at our halftime “board meeting” and no one bothered us the whole game. The only thing missing was a GT victory. They led most of the game but lost on a field goal with 8 seconds left. But all in all, an unforgettable goofy event. And remember what Ward said, “Act like you belong there”. It could come in handy.

I hope you enjoyed the read and it refreshed your own fond memories of this year’s Savage Open.