Inside the Portage County line By GENE KEMMETER of The Gazette SIMPLE PLEASURES: The Clark Street construction project has created a maze for motorists in the downtown area at times this summer, but it has also turned Main Street into a through-street, at least for short time. For the first time since CenterPoint Drive was constructed more than 10 years ago, motorists can make a left turn from Main onto Water Street. What joy there can be in simple things. * * * GOLFING TALES: The golf clubs are packed away already, another season is done. Actually, it's a one-day season for me, an annual event for the Final Score softball team organized by Tom Domaszek. We play a scramble, where each player hits a ball and the team then picks which ball to play after each hit. Mike Gagas, DeLloyd Shuda and Rich Spreda complete the foursome I'm in. Sometimes we have a debate over which is the best ball, but not often. Most of the time, we have a selection of one because the other three are in terrible locations. Every year of the event, about four or five now, we've won high score, which isn't surprising. Only Gagas had golfed more than once this season, and he has a strange stance. To guard against slicing the ball, he spreads his feet to the left to hit the ball straight, and does so sometimes. Most of the time his ball still slices, but not as much as it does when he addresses the ball the way pro golfers do. Several times we've won fewest putts, just as we did at Tuesday's event. We had one putt at every hole, a surprising number for others in the event, but a truthful count. We never had to have all four of us putt at any hole. We had some nice chip shots. By contrast, a foursome of Kent Zelhofer, "Casey" Sullivan, Jim Wroblewski and Bruce Kedrowski needed 14 putts. We have a good short game. However, it's throughout the course. Neal Milkowski won the longest drive event with a shot more than 200 yards, but our foursome matched him. Of course, it took us two shots to get where he was in one. And some of our drives never made the ladies' tee. Sullivan, a member of that most-putts foursome, won the longest putt event. Our foursome never had to attempt a putt longer than four to six feet. Kedrowski won the "closest to the pin" event on a par-3 hole. We never hit the green on any of our drives, although we were just off the green on the final hole. And our team did have one birdie on a par 5 hole. We used a towering drive and follow-up long shot by Spreda to get near the green. Then a good chip shot put us close to the pin and we made a relatively short putt. Now we'll have to wait another year to see how we'll do.