Night Golf II

Friday night was the second time I played in the Kiwaniis Night Time Golf Outing. This year I asked everyone I knew who played golf or knew what a golf ball looked like to play with me. Last year when I played I really didn't press anyone else to play with me since if it wasn't fun, I didn't want to be blamed, but I had a blast last year. This year's list was growing to around 6 to 8 people to play, but unfortunately it quickly died down to only 4 due to illness and other commitments that came up. My mom and I headed out to Lakeside golf course around 7:00pm. We got ourselves organized and grabbed some food. This year they kept it pretty simple with hotdogs, burgers, and brats with sides of beans and potatoes. The potatoes were simply delicious where they were kinda in between sliced and mashed with this fantastic cheese flavor. I had seconds and then thirds after we were done playing. Before we teed off they had a 50/50 drawing for cash. Now I usually don't enter these contests since I never win, but what the heck it's for charity and I had $5 burning a hole in my pocket. Of course I missed the winning number by only 2, but then realized that my cousin Marc had bought the next 5 tickets in the roll, so I ran inside and told him to look at his tickets and sure enough he had the correct number. He ended up winning $78 in the drawing. Lucky bugger. My friend Gina showed up a little later and we took upon the challenge of trying to find her a pull cart to rent at the golf course, but there weren't any available. I still find it hard to believe that at 7:30pm at night that all the rental pull carts were still on the course, but there was another night time golf outing going on at the same time on the par 3 course, so maybe. So we ended up throwing some of her clubs in mom's bag (already on a cart) and she played with some of my clubs on the course.

So with full tummy's.. OUT TO THE COURSE.

We started on #1 hole which is good since we didn't have to walk far to our first hole to tee off (shotgun start all over the course). Since the advent of daylight savings I wasn't sure if it would be dark enough on the first couple of holes to see the lighted golf, but it was just perfect time of the day to just see them. Gina and Marc hit their drives pretty safe on the left side of the fairway and then it became my time to hit. First hit of the year for me sad to say, no practice, no bucket of balls beforehand. I hit the ball very well and then noticed the ball start to curve for a nasty slice heading for the ONLY FREAKING WATER ON THE COURSE. 3...2...1.... spashdown. Son of a biscuit. So I was close to the clubhouse and decided to grab another ball before heading down the fairway. I had to pay $8 for another ball and glowstick. Of course my luck I actually ended up finding my ball on the edge of the water after already "activating" the new glowing ball. It took me a couple of holes to get warmed up, but I finally started hitting the ball pretty well. All of the team had good shots and bad shots.

You never really know what the weather will be out on the course, but it ended up being a very humid and warm night. Unlucky for mom and Gina who wore long pants and long sleeved shirts who were very hot the whole round. They were expecting a mosquito attack on the course, but I think all night only one mosquito buzzed my head. It took around 3 holes for the beer cart to find us, but lucky for us they were never far from us after that. I could have really used some water instead of beer for the heat, but the beer was just as tasty. I was a little concerned since we seemed to play alot faster than the group in front of us, so we had to pause a couple times to make sure we didn't hit our balls into the group in front of us. They were really hard to see. Toward the end of the round we were all getting pretty tired and had a few drinks in us, so we started hooping and hollering whenever we hit a halfway decent shot. That was fun.

We finished playing and went back inside the clubhouse to wait for everyone else on the course to come back in so we could count up all the scores and see who "won". It was already after midnight when we headed for the clubhouse. I don't remember it being that late, but that might be due to a later tee time due to daylight savings. As we waited for the rest of the groups to come in we ended up having leftover hamburgers and potatoes. Overall results for the night is that our group came in 2 over par and in second place in the mixed groups (missed by one stroke) and we ended up winning some door prizes. Everyone in our group had a real fun time and I think I can count on them comming out next year for sure, and hopefully get some more friend out there too. I finally got home at 1:00am not looking forward to getting up the next morning to move Jeff (yawn). That's the next story.....