Ladies and Gentleman,

When you read this email tomorrow morning, you will officially be 25 days away from the world’s greatest golf tournament: The Ninth Annual Myrtle Beach Open aka MB2K9 aka NAMBO! aka the one before double digits.

The summer of ot9 has seen memorable golf. It started with Eagle Rock at the Vinch wedding, rubbed its balls in some of our faces at Torrey Pines, gave us the redneck half of the Grover Slam in West Virginia, and culminated in the burgh this past weekend with some hilly golf and rainy hilly golf.

As we arrive at MB2K9 we have reached a turning point in our time honored tradition.  Gone are the late night bar adventures; gone are the nights which don’t affect our morns; gone are the wizards, firehouse subs and cockroaches; bring on man o’war, sticky fingaz and barefoot resorts.  Say goodbye to friday and saturday nights and say hello to sunday afternoon and monday night. But one thing remains the same, and we all know what that is.

Handicaps:

Math is our friend. Excel, our confidant: BEHOLD! the handicaps for MB2K9:

This years handicaps come from a calculation of 3 factors:

1. Your strokes from MB2K8
2. Your strokes from the 2009 Grover Invitational 3. Your handicaps on MB2K.com - 14 strokes (Greg and Neils handicap)

(The stroke system for MB2K is an inexact science.  At the end of the day, we are trying to give everyone a fair shake in the title. If anyone feels this is inaccurate, feel free to let me know and we can retry this).

Pic - 0 strokes
Neil - 0 strokes
Grove - 10 strokes (1. 10; 2. 12; 3. 7; total 29/3) Bob - 12 strokes (1. 14; 2. 10; 3. 11; total 35/3) Pete - 15 strokes (1. 17; 2. 14; 3. 15; total 46/3) Riba - 19 strokes (1. 19; 2. 16; 3. 23; total 58/3)

Odds:

Mike “Y.E.” Riba - 19 strokes - I believe a par par bogey finish on Thursday at Quicksilver has Y.E. feeling a little confident heading to MB2K9.  A new job also has Y.E. stronger than ever and ready for 4 rounds of golf.  He also officially has the greatest nickname is MB2K history. Odds - 10/1

2 time and Current MB2K Champion Robert Smith “the III” - 12 strokes - The anti-Y.E. started off par par on thursday only to finish up sloppily. The III played a lot of golf early in the season, but hasnt been playing much of late as he finally did what we all suspected and became a homo(ner). So here’s the question - Does the defending champion has 4 rounds of golf in him? Odds 8/1

Pete “NMD” Vinch - 15 strokes - What does NMD stand for? No More Distractions. Now that NMD is married, there’s nothing going to stand in his way of losing the BPTHNWAM tag.  According to Vinch, we’ve had some rounds in the 90’s recently.  If we get some MB2K rounds in the 90’s we could see the tag lifted.  Odds - 8/1

2 time MB2K Champion Neil “Schoey/Tit/Jew” Schoenberg - 0 strokes - Schoey decided Pic wasn’t the only one who could play a lot of summer golf.  8 rounds in May, 12 rounds in august, some added iron length, a 79 and a few low 80’s later and someone feels a little confident going into MB2K9, someone who hasnt been relevant at a MB2K in 6 yrs.  It all comes down to the tee game - keep it in play. Odds - 6/1

3 time MB2K Champion Greg “Pic” Picarello - Pic has played a lot of summer golf again as well. Some days the swing is broken, other days he’s flirting with 70’s.  The fact remains, no one is more consistent in MB2K than Pic. 2 70’s last yr, and an 82,82,81 stretch earlier this year proves that fact.  Smart money. Odds - 5/1

MB2K Champion Raymond “Chris” Grove - 10 strokes - Grover Slam 09, you heard it hear 2nd. Even though he hasnt golfed much this yr due to baby abey, i saw something on Friday that could result in some low scores.  All he needs to due is harness the new gut strength added to his irons (i know the feeling) and we could see Grover Slam 09 become reality.  Or he could shoot 4 rounds in the 100’s and pretend its a Grover Inv and finish dead ass last. Odds - 4/1

25 days bitches……