Cape golfers do well at Delaware Open
Dave McNabb won his second Delaware Open Golf Championship July 31 with a 9-under par performance in the three-round, two-day event held at DuPont Country Club, Wilmington.
The former site of the LPGA Championship presented a stiff test to the pros and amateurs competing in this year’s event.
John R. Lynch, a golf professional at The Peninsula near Millsboro, finished in second place, only one stroke behind McNabb, the former golf pro at Cavaliers Country Club near Wilmington.
Several other Cape Region golfers performed admirably in this year’s Open. Kings Creek Country Club teaching pro Chris Krueger tied for ninth place with an even par total. Chase Brockstedt, a local attorney and amateur golfer, tied for 13th place, one stroke ahead of pro Zac Oakley of The Rookery, who tied for 16th.
Michael Rushin of Baywood Greens tied for 21st place, along with fellow golf pro Neil Maurer of Bayside Resort. Troy Flateau, another golf pro at The Peninsula, finished in a tie for 30th.
Several other Cape Region golfers participated in the Open, but missed the cut. They included amateur Tim Freeh of The Rookery, golf pro Kevin Wiest of Kings Creek CC, amateurs Ed Brown and Clinton Bunting of Rehoboth Beach Country Club, and golf pro Phil Ortiz of The Peninsula.
Local club competition results
The Kings Creek Country Club Ladies 9-Holers played a T & F tournament July 20.
In a T & F format, the only scores that are counted are from those holes whose numbers begin with a T or and F.
This and other format options make me hope that the Kings Creek Ladies hold off on selecting the format choice until the end of the round, in some kind of blind draw among a range of options. Otherwise, for formats such as this one, what would be the point of trying hard to score well on all of the holes?
For this competition, Sally Horvath won the day, with Celia Martin taking second place and Chris Sullivan finishing in third place.
Sullivan also won the closest to the pin contest on the 16th hole, with an approach that rolled to a stop 15-feet-five-inches from the pin.
A taxing approach to golf winnings
Playing at one’s peak performance level is hard enough for one of the regular professional golf tournaments, and it ramps up from there for the designated major events, such as the The Masters or the British Open.
What’s not often considered by most golf fans are the many and different ways that governments can also take their share of the winnings.
The Internal Revenue Service of the United States Treasury has a deserved reputation for going after high-profile taxpayers, with the possible exception of the current Secretary of the Treasury. According to a recent article in TaxTv.com, Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs shares the IRS’s interest, especially among the players at the British Open.
Ernie Els, this year’s winner, collected a cool £900,000 by finishing in first place. For HMRC, that’s just the beginning of the total it considers available for taxation.
In addition, the UK will tap Els for a portion of the bonuses he is likely to receive from his various endorsers (clubs, apparel, banks and so forth), who pay out these bonuses for the golfers in their stables who win such prestigious events.
Furthermore, HMRC zaps golf pros for a piece of the extra change “earned” while practicing in the UK. In the example noted in the article, if a golfer practices seven days out of 350 in Great Britain, and picks up $5 million in total annual endorsements, $100,000 of that amount is taxable, at the 40 percent rate applied to the pros.
You might think that all these sources of a golfer’s income provided enough fertile ground for the tax collectors, but you would be wrong, The HMRC also seeks a percentage of any income paid to the golf pros for any paid appearances before, during, and after the Open.
