Otis Invitational History

Long ago there was a group of guys who played golf on Sunday Mornings at Arrowhead golf course in Wheaton. One of them was Terry Bulger, who worked for a bank in Chicago. One day (sometime in the late ‘80’s ) Terry asked two of his golfing partners - Ken Redenbaugh and his son Mike – if they would like to join him in a golf outing run by some of the guys he worked with at the bank.

These two co-workers of Terry’s had organized a golf outing in Kalamazoo Michigan at Thornapple Creek golf course, and played 90 holes there in three days. The group - made up of mostly bank employees and their friends - was called the Lapski – after its co-organizers named Gonski and Lapitina.

Back then, Thornapple was a course unlike any that they had seen - rolling terrain, a great layout with lots of trouble, and unbelievably fast greens. It was truly a golf paradise.

Terry, Mike and Ken played in the Lapski for a number of years – occasionally adding a few other neighbors and friends to the group. Eventually, Mike asked his friend Jason Zimberoff to join the group.

By this time, the Lapski group had grown to about 40 men, but the quality of the greens at Thornapple started to fall off from the glory days. So, they had also added another course to the schedule on Saturdays, called Heritage Glen. The Friday and Sunday rounds were still played at Thornapple though.

The Lapski golfers were also more serious about the winning and scoring, and it sometimes led to a lot of under-the-breath muttering about sandbaggers and people not following the rules. It did sometimes take away from what we thought the spirit of the trip should be.

With the addition of Jason Zimberoff also came many of his friends and family members. After a couple of

years, Mike and Jason were bringing at least 12 guys to Michigan with them to play in the Lapski – and a great time was had by all…

Until one dark day at the beginning of 1998, Mike got the phone call that changed history forever. The Lapski group wanted to go back to inviting more of the bank employees and more of their friends, and we were asked to only bring 4 players that coming summer.

That was all we needed to hear. How could we choose who could and couldn’t go? Would we hang our heads and agree to this? NO!

The group of Mike Redenbaugh, Jason Zimberoff, Bump Waghorne, and Rob Westover, all former Lapski players, decided to create a new outing based on the self-described “Oti” (pronounced oat-eye) club of over-served drinking buddies… named, of course, after everyone’s favorite town drunk – Otis Campbell of Mayberry.

We immediately got together and came up with the idea for the Otis Invitational - a group that would be made up of all of our friends and family. Although we did bring many of the long-time Lapski guys with us, we hope that we left all of the bickering and BS with the old group. We even replaced the Sunday individual scoring round with a scramble to make it more fun – along with a few other minor changes that we all wanted to make.

These days the Sunday round has gone away andw we hope this will make everything easier and more enjoyable for the group as we grow grayer, fatter and more irritable. The spirit of the Otis lives on though, and we suspect a good time will still be had by all!