Year-round Golf now a virtual reality

An eight-foot likeness of his was plastered on the trucks he rented through his company DayBo Rentals. But a heart attack in 1991 and a quadruple bypass surgery in 1995 slowed him down and he was forced to get out of the rental business.

The latest venture for hte 64-year-old entrepreneur is President of ProAmOpen.com -- The Tournament of Everyday Champions. Its main focus is a Web Site www.proamopen.com which features golf tournaments for amateurs and club pros and assistants, excluding tour pros. Pros pay a fee to compete while amateurs are free.

"The concept is we're using the internet as a means of communication only. This is real golf, played on real courses in real time," Boese said.

He has been working on the project for more then 3 years, losing almost two years of work when he had a falling out with his Web Page designers.

Through his friend George Darte, he hooked up with Ultimate Computer Software who exchanged developing the site for majority interest in it.

The Web site is in its very early stages with less than 1000 hits in late April. In addition to signing up golfers, it is also busy looking for advertisers.

Golfers have started to sign up on the web site and there's a chance the web site's first tournament could be held in May.

"There are 50 million golfers around the world and my goal within four or five years, we will have 50,000 members. It will take some time and it won't happen overnight."

Because of the nature of the internet tournament, Boese and the web site will rely on the honour system for golfers to be honest about their scores.

"We have rules and regulations with regards to if someone is found to be cheating. We'll never eliminate it totally but we have ways of determining cheating."

Competitors can play on any course providing it has a handicap or slope rating. Every month of the year is a tournament and golfers will enter 18 holes a week to make up a 72 hole tournament. The site will run 12 months of the year.

Golfers submit atleast one score a week and, if they enter more, the program automatically selects the best score. The program determines a net score based on the par and slop of the course played.

There are six different classes of amateur golfers -- junior boys and girls, men and women and senior men and women -- and each class has a division for those with a registered handicap and those without to make up 12 amateur categories.

Within each of the 12 categories there are seven flights based on handicap. For the six categories involving golfers without handicaps, the flights are based on the total number of entries divided by seven. "We're hoping to procure sponsors that will donate free rounds of golf (for the amateurs). As we progress, we hope to have other prizes," Boese said.

The head and assistant pros will be divided into men's and women's divisions and they'll play for American dollars. Prize money for the pros will be made up of 20 per cent of the pro entry fees and Web site advertising revenues.

A unique feature of the site is that it will have 84 leaderboards, one for each of the seven flights within the 12 categories, plus 12 overall year-end leaderboards for the amateur categories and four leaderboards for the pros, two for the men's and women's monthly tournaments and two more for the overall results.

Overall results in the amateur and pro divisions will be based on the results from the first five tournaments (months) entered. This will make it fairer for the golfers in colder climates.

Other features of the site are that it allows you to create your own private leaderboard or lets a golf course create a private leaderboard for its members. "With one score, you can be entered in the global league as well as your private league and golf course league," said Boese.