The Golfchick

That chick blabbing about anything golf related.

Month: March 2011

Mesquite Am Early Bird Deadline Tomorrow! (Make that Today)

March 31, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Thanks so much to those of you who have already signed up for the Mesquite Am – we have a good looking group coming together of “golf chick participants.” How do I know? I’ve met some of you and I have to assume anyone who signs up for this must be good looking. Heh. Oh, plus we’re already at about 60 people in our group, so the statement also applies to size! Plenty of room for more though!

Tomorrow Today is the last day to get in on the the early bird deals! If you sign up by Midnight (Pacific Time) on March 31 (I guess that would actually be 11:59:59 PM), you get the discounted entry fee of $475 and get entered into the Golf Chick drawing for a chance to win your hotel stay free. On April 1, the entry fee goes up to $525, and the Mesquite Am will draw the name from all the golfchick participants for the complimentary hotel stay winner (stay tuned – I will let you know!)

Guests and parties

Also – I noticed several of you are bringing non-golfing guests, which is great. We will have adequate seating for all of us reserved at the tent on welcoming night. After that, we’re on our own at night and can sit wherever we want. For those of you who still haven’t signed up, guests can join the nightly parties for $125 (that doesn’t change on April 1). There is also plenty for non-golfers to do during the day which will be listed in the program.

Let’s get together!

Speaking of nightly parties, would anyone be interested in all of us going out somewhere together after dinner that first night? I was thinking of maybe getting a shuttle bus or something and hitting the town for a couple hours – something casual like a lounge with live entertainment, billiards, darts, or even karaoke – just so we can get to know each other a little bit before we go off to our pairings for the tournament. Please let me know if you’re interested in the comments so others can see what you’re saying. Also, anyone who has registered, please don’t assume I have your email address – if you haven’t contacted me, I don’t. I may be contacting golfchick participants aside from this blog so please make sure I have your email address. If you leave a comment, I can get it that way, or you can always send me a note to kristen(at)thegolfchick(dot)com.

We’re going to have so much fun. I can’t wait to see or meet you in Mesquite in a couple months! Spread the word!

Sign up here (don’t forget to enter “golf chick” at the bottom of the form either in the “promotion code” or “how did you hear about the event” box!

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Getting Fitted for my Green Jacket

March 29, 2011 / / 8 Comments

The long awaited, much hyped new EA Sports game was finally released to the public today: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters. That’s right, we can all now finally play Augusta, at least in the virtual world. The game is available in stores today and if you pre-ordered it, it’ll be on the way. It’s available for X-Box, PlayStation and Wii, which is what I went with.

In order to play Augusta, you have to use a pro avatar or work your way up through the Tour and earn your way there using your own profile. As far as I know, you cannot bring Tour experience from an earlier game version to help get you there. So, since we all want to play the course as soon as we get our hands on the game, we’ll be playing as one of the pros at first, right? I went with Suzann Pettersen. She seems like a cool chick and I have heard great things about her fun personality.

Right away, you’ll notice a few new things besides the course.

As the game is loading, it asks to set up your balance board. I wish I had one – that would make the game even more real! (Update: Twitter friend @ToddLewiSS just told me that board only had a usable width of about 16.5″, so at 5’11”, my stance is a bit wider than that. As he pointed out, it might be fun to use for little chip shots but not for a full swing. I’ll have to think about whether or not I want to invest in this after all.)

Next, you have a caddie! Not just the Tour pros, either. When I create my own avatar (and I will), she will also have a caddie, whose own course knowledge will grow as my own experience progresses. Also, see that tee looking thingy next to my caddie in the pic above? Yep, you can re-position yourself within the teebox for better angles. Pretty cool.

Another tricky thing you may notice is that the wind actually swirls around on some holes! Careful with those shots. You may pick a club and a shot and by the time you swing the wind changed direction. Yeah, just like real golf! Only on the course, you don’t have the handy-dandy wind icon that tells you which direction and how hard it’s blowing. Just a cool little feature, I thought.

So, how did I do? Well, with swing settings on advanced, nice weather, Thursday pins and precision putting selected, here’s how “we” did:

As you can see, I had an eagle, a birdie and two bogies heading at the turn…

But then I made two birdies on Amen Corner alone! Had a three putt bogey in there and a couple good par saves. So what if the scorecard shows you going “out” on both sides? We know what they mean!

So thanks, Suzann, for being so reliable out there. And for having such a great caddy. He gave me a lot of good advice.

I recommend when you play this, you listen to your caddy! I liked figuring out my shots and THEN asking for advice to see if we agreed. Surprisingly, we usually did!

By the way, I do use the Wii Motion Plus on my controller, but that’s not all. I also have a Chicken Stick, which makes it feel much more like playing golf for real. It has a real grip and partial shaft, and the weight of the controller and motion plus in the device just about feels like the weight of an iron.  (You activate the b button by pulling that ring behind the club.) Awesome. You need one of these: Bad Chicken Wii Chick Stick Golf Club

Stay tuned as I will be posting progress reports with my own player and how I progress. Going to start on Tour and earn my way to Augusta this time.

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Potential LPGA / PGA Partnership – About More than Combined Tourney

March 16, 2011 / / 5 Comments

A few months ago, I posted a sort-of teaser about more to come regarding Tour players’ thoughts on having a combined PGA/LPGA event. Those conversations I mentioned did not happen. Players clammed up after there seemed to be some backlash against those in favor of the idea.

However, now it seems there may be more going on behind the scenes. Not just a combo tournament, it seems some higher-ups are tossing around plans/ideas that involve the PGA assuming responsibility for the LPGA Tour in at least some capacity. And now that someone with some serious clout is writing about it (see Ron Sirak’s Golf Digest article here), maybe players will be more likely to speak up as well. We shall see. What do you think of the idea(s)?

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