Sun makes me happy. Being able to golf year-round is one of the reasons I live in “sunny Southern California.” The ending of Daylight Saving Time every year saddens me. It marks the beginning of the end of twilight golf for the season. I know – people have real problems, and I feel guilty feeling depressed about something so innocuous while people and communities are still trying to survive the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. But this is a golf blog and this is a golf problem. And, hey – people are playing football and gambling on the games and life goes on all around us.
So, I’ll allow myself this annual pout.
While I’m at it, I figured I could add something you may find useful in this time of unimaginable trouble. In case you haven’t seen it already, this nifty tool is simply called Sunrise Sunset, and gives you that and more for your choice of golf course! It’s pretty handy for personal use or for club pros and golf course web designers. It tells you when the sun rises and sets, gives you local twilight times and other settings you can customize. I love finding such handy info on a course’s website! If you’re looking to find (or set) twilight rates and hours, this is your tool. Right around when the time changes (like today) you might be wondering when it’s going to get dark at your favorite course and whether or not you’ll have time to play after work before the sun goes down. This can help.
The site has specific course information for a massive selection of USA, Canada, and England (I’d be surprised if your favorite course isn’t there), as well as major cities in other countries. You can see in the first image the options you have once you’ve chosen your course. The other image is just a clip of the calendar I created here. Give it a try for yourself and have fun squeezing in rounds if you’re lucky (and smart) enough to live in place that hasn’t been buried in snow yet!
My next (scheduled) pout will occur on December 21st, the shortest – and saddest – day of the year, irrespective of circumstances, of course. You know, that painfully dreary winter solstice right when I’m thinking it’s almost time to start my last minute Christmas shopping. And, as the dreadfully upbeat people like to tell me, that just means every day after that will have more and more daylight. Pththtp!! 😉 Leave me alone. You can’t fix this. That is, unless you can make it so that daylight saving time becomes permanent. Then I’d love you long time. Day or night.
Oh by the way – I neglected to get a photo with my playing partners Garnette and Susan that first day (although I did put Garnette’s shoes up on Facebook for the Golfchick’s best shoe contest). And while I don’t seem to have any pics of me in my golf attire that day, I did snap a close up of my top because it’s a cool Golf Chick logo shirt I wanted to share with you.
some prizes but I got bumped for time. They did invite me up to make a brief announcement to the group that I would be doing the prize giveaway over by the pool after the dinner. Trouble with that is, people had plans and got lured by the casinos so we only had about 45 people show up. Oh well, more prize opps for them! That night I gave away a 
time record round of 82, which I shot there last year during the Mesquite Am. I had hoped for some more of that magic. Alas, it wasn’t to be. I shot the exact same score as the day before (101) which I figured would put me somewhere near the middle of the pack. Not good enough. However, it was a fun day with my playing partners. I rode with “Badass Vicki,” who is always up on stage when they need volunteers for entertainment or on the video reel doing something crazy. You can’t miss her and if you’ve been to a Mesquite Am you probably know who she is. In the other cart were Roxanne and Kathy, two terrific ladies. Incidentally, I played The Palms with Kathy last year when I shot my record round. This year, it was her turn. How awesome is that? In the pic Left to Right – Vicki, me, Roxanne, Kathy. Every one of us landed that green you see across the ravine. Sure it’s a big green but that’s a daunting carry in person. No birdies were made but two of us, including me, made par.
After the round, I did a little shopping at the Palms pro shop to spend my winnings from the long drive and got a really cute skort. Â *Side note: That morning before the round I spent one of my certificates on a couple gloves since I left mine out on my bag in the hot car and it got all hard and gross. Â This is exactly why I don’t leave my golf shoes in the car. If you don’t know this, hear me now. The heat and sun will remove the luster and shorten the lives of your leather goods including your awesome shoes.
up my mind to relax, drink, take pictures and not care so much about the golf for our round at Casablanca Golf Club. I also figured that might even help my game. I had fun playing with Brittany, who was a hot little number from Florida and a great sport. She wore a super short skirt (pictured at right) just for my twitter followers. She was also super chill and a cool chick. I’m sure we’d hang out and play golf if we lived near each other. I started the day with a bloody mary but moved on to rum soon after that. I was actually having a decent round but didn’t know it. Brittany mentioned it to me on the last hole, so I proceeded to take an 11 there. Let’s just say it involved water and someone’s backyard and that my “good shot” on the entire hole went in the greenside bunker. With that 11, I shot 96. Thanks a lot, Brittany. I thought you were cool. Heh. My scored landed me smack in the middle of my flight for the tournament. Much better than last year’s DFL, but still disappointing. I like to play well and I like to make sure my peeps have a good time. I’m going to be working towards doing better in both areas for next year. And if you have any suggestions, please let me know what you’d like to see to make The Golf Chick portion of the event better for you!
Back in the tent for the dinner party, all the flight winners were announced. I was happy to see so many of the Golf Chick participants in the money and some even moved onto the championship round the next day! Huge congratulations to Dana Boyette, who was the 1st runner up for low net overall! She was also the most active Golf Chick player in the shoe contest and on FB in general (she’s the one who snapped a pic of me tweeting!) and won herself a prize for all that activity. Thanks for being so fun, Dana, and well done! Those of us not in the championship round did, of course, find the dance floor yet again.
buddies are using Twitter, but I was slow to get on the bandwagon. I wasn’t sure why except for maybe it was just something else to follow and take up precious time and thought energy.
Tomorrow is the two-year anniversary of The Golf Chick blog. I’ve been meaning to move to my new domain for awhile now and figured this was a good time to do it. I’ll start my third year of blogging with a fresh new look and location.
that I’ve been using ever since. I really appreciate it and have enjoyed it so much since then! So to thank him, I’ve completely ripped him off by creating my own version of his idea for my updated look. I still really like his version and will probably use both his and mine at times.
