One of our members e-mailed us yesterday saying that she had seen her first robin, and another friend sent a picture of a blue jay in her tree, harbingers of spring for sure as well as a bluebird of happiness. This usually starts us dreaming of our first golf game but unfortunately we are all overwhelmed by the news surrounding COVID 19 and we all have many questions on our minds, golf I am sure is probably the least of our worries.
However we want to assure you that we are optimistic and continue to actively plan for the upcoming golf season. We also want you to know that your health and safety are paramount and we will, and have taken appropriate responses to the current situation. Sadly we had to cancel our Palm Springs Spring Training and the March indoor lessons. Refunds are being done for Palm Springs and the lessons are being re-scheduled, thank you for being flexible and understanding. These are fluid and unprecedented times and none of us can foresee what will happen in the weeks to come. We will continue to make these decisions based on the situation at hand and rest assured that if programs have to be cancelled, refunds will be made.
We are all looking forward to getting back to normal, to be able to hug our love ones again, to go to the store and find full shelves again, and a golf game will be a treat indeed.
Most importantly for now we wish you and your loved ones the best of health. We will work through this together and we will prevail. As we rally together to beat this we will strive to be part of the solution to beat this pandemic and there will be happier times ahead.

How many women does it take to change a windshield washer wiper”. Well it took 6 of us diehards one snowy night after we hitting balls followed by libations at the Dog and Duck.   The owner/cook of  Dog & Duck was on his way out help but we thought we would give it a try.  With determination and light provided by mobile phones, Dorothy finally got the wiper attached.

To all of the helpful golf women

Thank you all so much for your help last night with the windshield wiper repair. There was no way that I would have been able to make it home without the wiper attached. What a great group of women. My only regret is that we did not get a video of the expertise work that was going on.  If the snow would stick to the mountains it would be much better for us. Thanks again. Dana

We are so excited to have Lisa Longball (Vlooswyk) as a guest at this years Orientation & Social in Calgary. I promise you will be captivated by her energy and passion and so invigorated when you leave.  What a fabulous way to kick off the season. Stay tuned for more detail but for now you need to mark your calendars with May 1  5:30pm Sirocco Golf Club,  so you don’t miss this dynamic lady.

Lisa Longball “Believing strongly in women’s golf, she started the Lisa Longball Golf school for Women which has been wildly successful both in Canada and the USA.”

She is Eight-time Canadian Long Drive Champion went from being a high-handicap recreational golfer to a professional player who hits farther than most men.  She currently holds the Canadian Women’s Long Drive record at 350 yards 2 feet 2 inches. She is a busy mom, golf journalist and a successful Keynote Peak Performance Speaker.

 

 

Edmonton Orientation/Social will be held April 27 at The Ranch Golf Course and we do hope to have something fun for you ladies as well, stay tuned for more details.

Some more great news for the Edmonton ladies, we added a 9 hole day league choice on Wednesday mornings. This allows us to grow the Day league and it is a nice option for those that do not have the whole day for a game of golf.

There are benefits to playing 9 holes for all of us. Let’s face it we live in a very busy world with work and family commitments and it is tough to find some time for ourselves. It is important to get a well-deserved break every now and then, but going out and playing 18 holes of golf isn’t always easy due to time, cost, and physical limitations.

• Playing 9 holes should take just under 2 ½ hrs
• 9 holes rates are less than 18 hole rates – as we try to get the best bang for our buck these days
• Playing nine holes allows you to get great exercise without overdoing it if you face health restraints

Come out and play holes – no more excuses!!!

 

The December news feed promised you that we were going to add some more choices to the Calgary schedule. Presently you have a wide variety of great municipal, semi-private and private golf courses to choose from and it only gets better. We are adding the Mickelson National, soon to be private golf club, to the Day and Evening League schedules and also Bearspaw Golf Course. In addition, we have some late day nine opportunities at Maple Ridge and Shaganappi Valley Nine which is also a choice for the Day league nine holers.
All we need now is some excellent weather and we will have a fantastic season of good golf, good friends and great memories.

There are many exciting changes for the Edmonton Golfaround 2020 season.

For those of you who have golfed at JR’s it has been sold and is now called Meadowview.  I’ve been told that  the new owners are planning on putting a lot of work into the course and are excited for the new year, we look forward to playing here this season.

Last year I played at Edmonton Springs with a few other members and am happy to report that we have now included this course as part of our schedule for our Evening League and Day League.  This 18 hole course situated in the west end has challenging holes with water in play, and a quaint clubhouse for socialization later.

If you have played Trestle Creek and loved it – It is now on our regular schedule for Monday August 10 Day League!  It is a little bit of a drive, but it is a beautiful course with an outstanding rate and great clubhouse.  You don’t want to miss this one.

Since Golfaround is also about the socialization, food, and drink – here is some news to make many of our members happy!  The City of Edmonton has hired a new restaurant group to handle the food services for the following courses:  Riverside, Rundle Park and Victoria.   The Robert Spenser Hospitality Group serves two well known restaurants, Workshop Eatery and Woodshed Burgers and looking forward to highlighting  local ingredients.  Personally I can hardly wait – as I typically love to eat a meal after golf!  Edmonton Coordinator Lyn Propp

Calgary Golf Show BMO Centre Hall B CANCELLED

March 21 & 22

Edmonton Golf Show Expo Centre, Hall H CANCELLED

April  4 & 5

Baby it’s cold outside!!!  There is a mountain of snow on the ground and a couple of months for winter activities, but Spring is coming.  Are you sick of snow, blizzards and shoveling your driveway? Get out of the cold to experience a taste of the spring that is on its way by visiting the Golf Show this month, it will lift your spirits. The March & April  Golf Shows   kick off the golf season for us and many avid golfers.

Reasons to attend:

Sharpen your skills by getting a bit of instruction, attending informational seminars or participating in hands-on lessons or skills clinics.

Visit the Clearance Center to purchase golf equipment and apparel,  the discounts alone make it well worth the trip.

Check out the “stay & play” packages and new destinations to travel to to golf.

Take a test drive trying out a club before you buy. An area is available for golfers to test the latest equipment from an assortment of manufacturers.

Enter contests where you win prizes, I am not sure what they will have to test our skills this year but there always something.

Win prizes and giveaways by registering to win door prizes & drawings.

Oh, the weather outside is frightful
But the dome is so delightful
And since there’s no place for grub
To the pub, to the pub, great grub

The North Dome, Eaglequest at Fox Hollow, is having a new heating system installed.  This is something badly needed especially when it is as cold as it was in January. Because of this we have been meeting at the South dome, The National Golf Academy, for all of January and the last two weeks of February. The North Dome heating system should be replaced by the end of February, so our plan is to go to the north in March.
We are restricted to 20 people at the South dome and believe it or not each week so far we have had a full slate as well as a waiting list. I am sure our neighbors must wonder when they see us going to our cars with golf clubs when it is 30 below zero and colder.
We also found a place in very close proximity to the Dome for food following our practice. The Dog and Duck established in 1992, an original English pub which is a locally owned, family business. This find was thanks to Bev Blair and what a find it is.
They offer 16 different beers on tap and are known for pouring the best Guinness in town as attested by some of the Ireland group. Our waitress MaryAnne is great and John does a terrific  job pouring our beverages. Not sure who the chef is but the food has been very good and there are lots of excellent choices.

Here we are in 2020 a new decade and 23 years since the inception of Golfaround Inc. Back in 1997 Golfaround wasn’t incorporated and looking back we had many a chuckle about how we did things then and now.
Up until 2014 the registration process was not an e-commerce process as it is now. We did have a website where you could download the form and utilizing the lesson and league data on the site you would manually complete the form, indicate if you were paying by check or credit card and if a credit card you would include your number. We would receive the completed form by mail, fax or in person. We then would have to complete credit card deposit slips for each transaction and phone this into a  processing company. Checks would be recorded, batched and taken to the bank….all very labor intensive. In addition back then only about 35% were online so we also had to provide hard copy for those without internet. These folk also would phone in their league requests vs doing it by e-mail, today there is not one person without e-mail and many send in their choices using their smart phones.
While we are talking about phones, think about it, in 1998 cell phones were still a rareity and today everyone has a cell phone and some have smart watchs that they use to communicate. I must be dating myself but once when I was teeing off I noticed one of the gals talking to her wrist and she informed me her friend had arrived and was at the range. Twenty years later it’s obvious how much our world has changed.
The internet has transformed virtually every aspect of our lives from the way we communicate to how we consume news, research and navigate. Remember when we used a paper map to find where we were going? We also used to have written directions to all the golf courses, now we hyperlink the golf courses on the schedule to the websites for directions. Just last season one of the beginners had forgotten her phone at home and she told us she had quite the challenge using her paper map to get to where she was playing. With step-by-step directions on Google Maps we don’t have worry any more.
I think all our workplaces were a lot less tech orientated, where before, all of our communication took place over our landline or in person, today the phone hardly rings and most of our communication takes place on-line.
Once upon a time pictures actually had to be taken to a centre to be developed (unless you were lucky enough to have a Polaroid), and couldn’t be uploaded on a screen. Nor checked right away to see if a retake was in order–what you snapped was what you got. Now we regularly take selfies (with or without the stick), and have various duck faces to help set the mood.
It was great fun thinking about how we used to do things and I must admit some things I could not really recall with total accuracy. All in all we feel we have come a long way in 23 years and can be proud of how we have evolved.
So here’s to another decade and more changes I am sure….lifetime learning is what it is and we love the challenge.

“And now we welcome the new year, full of things that have never been” Rainer Maria Rilke

Wishing everyone a healthy, happy, and successful 2020