GOLFEST 2007 - PINEHURST
RANK - COURSE - DATE
2 - Pinehurst Resort & C.C. – No. 2 - (5/21)
42 - Pinehurst Resort & C.C.– No. 4 - (5/22)
44 - Pinehurst Resort & C.C– No. 8 - (5/22)
83 - Rivers Edge Golf Club - (5/24)
N/R - Pinehurst Resort & C.C. – No. 7 - (5/19)
N/R - Oyster Bay Golf Course - (5/23)
N/R - Glen Dornoch Waterway Golf Links - (5/24)
N/R - Barefoot Resort – Dye Course - (5/25)
N/R - Barefoot Resort – Norman Course - (5/25)

2007 Photo Album

     (Written by Jim Allen) ... The planning process for Golfest 2007 began with the best intentions, but ended up taking more twist and turns than an Indy car road race. It gave a whole new meaning to "seat of the pants" planning.  Our intended mission was to dive into Virginia and North Carolina and knock off seven courses from our list, with the famed Pinehurst Resort being the centerpiece of the trip.  How hard could that possibly be?
  
     We would fly into Norfolk, play a couple of courses in Virginia, hop on a plane to Raleigh-Durham, play Pinehurst, scoot over to the North Carolina coast for a couple more, and fly home out of Myrtle Beach.  Well ... that all looked good on paper until Art Taylor and I spent eight hours one Saturday checking our flight options.
  
     Getting from the left coast to the right coast was a piece of cake and pretty cheap.  It was the middle flight, the extra $450, and the airport downtime that effectively wiped Virginia off our Golfest trip.  After all, a day lost sitting in an airport was 36-holes not played.  So we implemented PLAN B.  This would require us to start a few miles up the road from where Golfest 2006 concluded in North Myrtle Beach.  From there we would work our way up the Carolina coast to Tiger’s Eye and Rivers Edge, before finishing off the trip at Pinehurst. 
 
     Then the juggle-fest began again.  If we were going to play Pinehurst on our planned dates, we were informed that we would be doing it on freshly aerated greens.  That had about the same odds of happening as me fantasizing about Hillary Clinton posing naked in Playboy (holding back the gag reflex).
   
     As a result, the schedule got juggled a couple more times, and now Pinehurst was on the front end of the trip.  Unfortunately, the ultimate loser was Tiger’s Eye (rated #87) because no matter how hard we tried, their course was going to be punched when we arrived.  Once again, think of Hillary naked!
  
     So now the seven Top 100 courses were down to four – Pinehurst No. 2, No. 4, No. 8 and River’s Edge.  Being the possessed hackers that we are, we decided to add a few non-rated, but highly recommended venues to our trip and have a good time.   It was finally time to book some flights.

     It was about this time that we discovered the next serious challenge.  Let's call this PLAN C!  We were planning to fly back home on Friday, May 25th – which is just another Friday in May, right?  Unless you don’t actually look at a calendar to find out that the following Monday is Memorial Day.  Not only was this one of the busiest airport days of the year, it’s also a day that most airlines “black out” all of their rewards points and miles.

     It was time to improvise again with an e-mail to the Golfestians – “what do you want to do?”  In typical fashion, Jim Dee answered it within five minutes.  It should be noted that when Mr. Dee receives an e-mail with the word “golf” in the subject line, he gets that same feeling as Uma Thurman did in Pulp Fiction, when John Travolta revived her by jamming the epinephrine needle directly in her heart.  Pure adrenaline!  ”Ding, You’ve got Golf Mail,” … boy, you better hope you are not sitting in front of his lap top – you could get hurt.
     Dee’s answer was simple and to the point:  Stay another day, and work in two more rounds of golf at the Barefoot Resort.  Smart man!  So there we have it:  A Saturday to Saturday adventure, with nine rounds of golf sandwiched in the middle.
  
     Now came the time to lock in the golfers.  We had commitments from at least 20, but it took a strange twist -- something resembling more of a hair pin turn.  Let's call it PLAN D.  You know that feeling you get when your favorite NFL team puts together all of the right players for the Super Bowl run?  But three weeks into the season, some of the key players go down with injuries and you just hope you make the playoffs.  Then you lose a couple of more and you start looking forward to next year’s draft?  It was a little like that.
     
     Mr. Las Vegas -- Rickey Berger -- was the first person to go on the injured reserved list.  He took a head over heels flip while making a sales call and blew out his shoulder.  Besides Rickey, have you ever heard of anyone else who has been seriously hurt on a sales call?  The Doc prescribed six months of no golf, which is tough to swallow for a man who has been golfing twice a week – every week – since he was 14.  Rickey’s ace golf partner Craig Decker, who is allegedly employed at some alleged secret base in the alleged Nevada desert, did the alleged politically correct friend thing and dropped out also.  That’s two down.  Greg Jones and Brian Birdwell had to do the work gig – four down.  And, a contingent of “you can’t have fun without me” spouses slaughtered the dreams of five others – nine down.

    Oh, and let’s not forget about Tony Fernandes, who had to cancel out at the last moment due to a wrist injury and a beautiful assortment of bruises delivered by his now ex-wife.  Apparently, the little woman was trying to exterminate him at the time.  A couple more whacks and Tony would’ve became fodder for one of those “who dunnit” forensic stories on the Discovery Channel.  More proof that marriage is still the leading cause of divorce – which he promptly filed while we were gone. 
 
     However, one man’s loss is another man’s gain.  We had three new additions to the trip – Kasey Scheidenlein, Spanky Hayes, and Joe Arellanes.  Kasey is Jim Dee’s son-in-law and is a dead ringer for Limp Bizkit lead singer Fred Durst, tattoos and all.  Spanky is Kasey’s best friend, drinking partner, and golf advisor. 
 
     Joe Arellanes is a Territory Manager who was coaxed into making the trip at the last minute by Mark Suzda and me. Joe is a nice guy and fit in well with our group, taking his first real real vacation in a decade.  He is the kind of person that would jump on a live grenade to save his friends.  Luckily, we don't have any grenades on Golfest because with the right amount of alcohol, someone might have called that bluff.

     Joe also became our only Hispanic representative in our group.  By the way, after a few cocktails, the last names of "Scheidenlein" and "Arellanes" are nearly impossible to pronounce.  The rest of the this years 10-golfer group featured Jeffrey Adkins, Jim Dee, Bob Potts, Mark Suzda, Art Taylor, Mike Werner and me.

     Our contingent flew into the Raleigh-Durham airport, rented cars, and made the 75-mile journey to Pinehurst.  Luckily, we arrived in the early evening, which actually allowed us to find our way, because they don’t have too many well-lit street signs in the "back-woods" of North Carolina.  There are lots of big trees - but few SIGNS!  Nextel GPS and Hertz “Neverlost” ... (MORE)