Tom Coady takes a shot during tournament play. Photos by Jerry Lower/
The Coastal Star
By Steve Pike
Ron Vaughn smiled broadly and shook his head.
“I finished third in a tournament last week. Today I can’t get out of my own way,” he said.
Welcome to the world of shuffleboard. Like any other sport, it can be a fickle mistress. Just when you think you have the game figured out, it throws you a curve. Or in the case of shuffleboard, it blocks you out.
“Ninety percent of the game is strategy and the other 10 percent is skill,” said Vaughn, treading close to the Yogi Berra-ism that 90 percent of baseball is half-mental.
“Almost like playing chess,” said Vaughn, one of the area’s top amateur shuffleboard players and a member of the Briny Breezes Shuffleboard Club. The 163-member club, which is open to any owner, resident or guest of Briny Breezes (annual dues $2) plays every day between mid-December and mid-April at the community’s 14-court facility.
The club’s primary in-season weekly events are Fun Day Tuesdays, in which beginning players learn the basics of the game from resident professional Rose “Sunshine” Miller, and a couple’s tournament every Wednesday.
It’s not unusual to see each of the 14 green-colored concrete courts occupied during a couple’s event. That’s 64 players not including a few substitute players.
“You get some mature people out here who physically don’t have good legs but they play very well,” Vaughn said. “Some of the best players in the district are 80-year-old people. They just know what they’re doing.”
On this particular sunny March Saturday, however, the club held its annual Bill Ingram Tournament, named in honor of one of its late members. A total of 18 club members participated in the doubles tournament, including Vaughn and Tom Coady, who along with wife, Sue, have been renting a home in Briny Breezes the past two years. The Creadys, who spend their summers in Columbus, Ohio, came to Briny Breezes basically because of shuffleboard.
“We were at Pompano and belonged to a club down there,” said Tom Coady, a 62-year-old retired government employee. “There are district tournaments from here to Hollywood. We played in some of those and that’s how we found out about Briny Breezes and how nice the people are here. So we decided to rent.”
Ron Vaughn laughs while adjusting his cue.
Coady and Vaughn played on different teams at the Ingram tournament, but are one of the area’s top amateur doubles teams. The duo last won the Delray Beach Senior Games doubles tournament this past February.
“I play whenever I can,” said Vaughn, 70, a native of Wausau, Mich., who has spent the past 12 seasons at Briny Breezes. “I’ve only been on the circuit a couple of years but I played for about four years before that.
“Tom and I play on the circuit (Hollywood to Lake Worth) at least once a week. To play a lot, you have to get out on the circuit. And you have to play against good players. That’s the only way you’re going to get better.”
Yogi would be proud.
Wooden carriers hold playing disks in the Briny Breezes shuffleboard courts.
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