A resident of Las Vegas, Brady Exber looked out across The Honors Course on Sunday afternoon and observed, "Forget about the golf. You could just sit on the clubhouse porch and have the time of your life soaking in the beauty of this place."
The 55-year-old Exber did a wee bit more than that while playing in the Senior division of the John T. Lupton Memorial Tournament this holiday weekend.
Participating in his first senior event, using the Stableford scoring system for the first time ever, he totaled 108 points to finish first among 51 golfers. The mid-amateur division's 57 entrants stuck to traditional stroke play.
"I understand why they use [Stableford] for senior play," said Exber, who didn't take up the sport until he was 19. "On a course like this, if you didn't have it, you could have guys out there for a very long time. This way, if you're having one bad hole, you just pick up your ball and move on."
Even golf fanatics may be surprised to learn that the scoring system devised by Dr. Frank Barney Gorton Stableford has been around since 1898, having first been used informally at the Glamorganshire Golf Club in Penarth, Wales.
Its initial intent was to encourage golfers not to give up on a round after one or two bad holes. It awarded points based on positive results only. A par might be worth a point, a birdie two points, an eagle three points. Bogeys wouldn't count against you and if you were headed for a double bogey or worse, you just picked up your ball and moved on.
(True confession: On the three occasions I've been fortunate enough to lose a dozen or so dimpled darlings during a media day at The Honors, I've introduced the Weeds scoring system, which ignores any stroke total per hole of more than 10. A patent is still pending.)
Anyway, Stableford's system didn't find its way into a tournament until 1932 at Wallasey Golf Club in Wallasey, England. The PGA didn't embrace it until 1986, when it began staging The International at the Castle Pines Golf Club in Colorado.
Unlike Stableford's original system, the PGA used a modified format that penalized golfers for bogeys (-1) and double bogeys (-3), while increasing the points for good scores (+5 for eagles).
Davis Love III and Phil Mickelson each won the event twice over its 21 years, but lack of a consistent sponsor forced its cancellation following the 2006 PGA season.
For the Lupton Memorial, The Honors Course chose to award 1 point for a bogey, two for a par, three for a birdie and four for an eagle, with no negative points for double bogeys or worse.
Finishing second to Exber under that format were Steve Johnson and Pete Andrews, who each totaled 105 points.
"I like it," said the 62-year-old Andrews, who moved from Chattanooga to Tampa, Fla., in 1988 because of work. "It can speed up play sometimes, especially on a course like this. But I don't really think it had any real impact on the winner. I think the standings would have been pretty much the same whether we'd used the Stableford or stroke play."
Andrews also insisted he would have been delighted with his result under either system, saying, "I played about as good as I can play. I played over my head, to be honest."
As for Exber, who leaves the Scenic City head-over-heals in love with The Honors Course, regardless of what scoring system the club uses.
"It's just a perfect combination of difficult and beautiful," said the retired hotel/casino executive. "My friend, Doug Poole, learned about this tournament back in the winter. He said, 'This is one we've got to go for.' We submitted applications and were fortunate enough to be invited. Now I just hope they'll let us come back next year."
After soaking in another long stare of the course, Exber added, "This is like Disneyland for a golfer."
Especially when the scoring system doesn't penalize you for double bogeys.