FARMINGTON HILLS – Dee Piccard of Sparta remembers leaving before sunrise for her first course rating experience with a man she had just met, and then experiencing a long rainy and windy 40-degree day and returning home 12 hours later.
“I don’t think they thought they would ever see me again,” she said and laughed.
Piccard returned though and has been serving as a course rater for the Golf Association of Michigan for nine years. She was selected as the 2019 Golf Association of Michigan Course Rater of the Year, and normally would have been honored at the GAM Annual Meeting. That meeting was changed to a virtual meeting without honors presentations due to the COVID-19 outbreak.
The award is presented annually to the course rater who demonstrates outstanding proficiency with the Course Rating System™ and is committed to helping grow and develop the GAM Course Rating program, Kyle Wolfe, director of handicap rating for the GAM said in announcing the award.
“There is no more deserving recipient than Dee Piccard who participated in over 20 Course Rating activities during the 2019 season,” he said. “Her footprint reached far outside West Michigan as she rated golf courses in almost all the geographic areas where the GAM conducts Course Rating.
“Most importantly however, is the impact Piccard has on others through her training. She has mentored many course raters over the last nine years of her involvement and has helped the GAM develop a strong core of volunteers. Dee, along with her husband Marv, have given so much of their time and effort to the GAM and its mission of promoting, preserving, and serving amateur golfers in Michigan.”
The GAM Course Rating Program typically rates about 70 courses each year across the state, and the raters are volunteers who collect raw data for the Course Rating System. It is one of the many services provided to Michigan golf by the GAM and is dependent on volunteers like Picard who value the opportunity to give back to the game they love.
Course raters are typically avid golfers who have an analytical inclination and the process orientation to apply the methodology while playing the course. Their data collection helps to produce the course ratings needed to apply the World Handicap System via the GAM and the United States Golf Association.
“At the (Volunteer Day) last year when they announced the award and all the people stood up that I have trained, that was pretty awesome,” she said.
Piccard, 73, said a friend first mentioned course rating to her and she was interested.
“When I started, I loved it,” she said. “I really enjoy being out there and doing this.”
Picard said she is not a particularly good golfer but enjoys the challenge of the game and finds the analytical part of rating interesting and fun.
“Every time I go out there is something different, a different challenge to doing a rating,” she said.
Her favorite part: Meeting nice people.
“I have met so many wonderful people,” she said. “I look forward to it every year. I enjoy it and sign up for as many as I can. And now with my husband we try to recruit as many as we can and work with the new men and women and teach them how to do it. That’s very enjoyable. It’s a nice way to spend a summer.”
-Greg Johnson [email protected]
