Day off, and....

We played 14 holes at Sunset Hills on Monday, and we had the place to ourselves.

Why you ask, especially on Martin Luther King's birthday, when so many people have the day off?

Because it was COLD, that's why!!! BITTERLY cold for Southern California...in fact, we've had rather bad frost damage to many of the plants in the back yard....Southern California has been in the grips of some record-setting cold weather for the past few days and nights, and the temperature in the Thousand Oaks area has dipped into the high 20's and low 30's for the last three nights, and the cold north winds were blowing 20-30mph throughout the day today...

I bundled up in three layers of a mock turtleneck, polo shirt and my Longs Drugs Challenge Anitigua golf jacket and headed out to do battle with the course and the elements, and you know what? Thanks to the world's best golf ball (IMO), the Callaway HX Tour coupled with my new Heavenwood 4H hybrid, I managed to post a 43 (8 over) for the front nine...

For some reason, I found the sand repeatedly, but managed to make some MIRACULOUS sand saves with that magic HX Tour ball, where it popped out of the sand, checked up like it was sticking to Velcro, and stopped right by the pin for a relatively easy putt...

HX Tour's cost a bit more, but based upon today's round, I might be trading up from the HX Hot to play the HX Tour for its better spin characteristics around the green...I've been practicing a more descending stroke at the range in an attempt to get the ball to check up more, and I think that the practice is beginning to pay dividends...but the ball didn't hurt the efforts either...

And, also had an unscheduled detour yesterday...the plan was to play in the Guys'N'Dolls tournament that teed off at noon at Sunset Hills CC, but I just HAPPENED to stumble across GolfChannel.com and checked out the new Golf Inventor reality show link, and Holy SHMOKES, they had open auditions for Los Angeles yesterday!!! I had submitted my application back around Halloween, and gotten an e-mail confirmation back, but somehow I fell through the cracks, and wasn't notified of yesterday's open auditions at the LAX Hilton Hotel.

Coincidentally, that LAX Hilton Hotel was my second-ever audit client when it first opened, and I knew where everything was...it was weird returning to a place that I spent SO many long days auditing way back when I was in an internship program at Cal State Northridge...

The auditions were from 8AM to 8PM, and they had opened the doors for registration at 7AM...seeing as I stumbled across the announcement at 9:30AM, and had to complete a rather lengthy application, get ready and travel to the LAX area, I checked in at 12:50PM and was assigned #96...and they were on #58 when I got my number. I had my 5 minute audition about 5:30PM, and I had taken in three putters with TartanGolfGrips.com grips on them as part of my audition. From what I could tell, most of the inventions were more technical or training oriented than my product, but the auditioner who greeted me instinctively blurted out "Those are COOL grips!" when he saw them, which was EXACTLY the reaction that I always hope for...

We'll see how the audition process goes, but there were at least 98 people who showed up in Los Angeles, and they're having auditions in Orlando, Dallas, Chicago and one or two other cities...and it appears that there's NO shortage of golf junkies who have designed "the next big thing" and want to introduce it to the world in the new reality series on the Golf Channel.