Clint 56/365

Warning: Long story to come.Jean and I have some vacation time coming up, and we had a really hard time deciding what to do. We finally decided to take a road trip to the San Francisco area and probably do a little driving along Highway 1.I love to golf, and pretty much my entire golfing life (since I was 8), I’ve wanted to play Pebble Beach on the Monterey peninsula. Pebble is the #1 ranked public golf course in America. When I was about 14, my mother and I were in the area, and I MADE her stop at the clubhouse so that I could get the feel of the place. We walked out to the 18th green, and the men finishing up were nice enough to lend me their putter and hit a ball or two, and take a photo. It is a public course, but it’s extremely expensive and at the time, you had to book a tee time a year+ out.On a lark, I looked up what it would take to play there, and they had availability (or so it seemed) from their Web site. I called, and to guarantee a tee time more than a day in advance, you need to stay at the resort (starting at $900/night). But I can call the day before I want to play to see if there is an opening. The good news was that I could get a guaranteed tee time to play Spyglass Hill - which is only the #11 public course in america. The better news is that if there is an open time at Pebble on the day I want to play, I can convert my Spyglass reservation to Pebble! (On a side note, I wanted to play St. Andrews when we were in Scotland last year, but there you really DO have to get reservations a year in advance. I was too late, and all I could do was to spend a morning there soaking it all in)My dear sweet wife has agreed to let me check this item off of my Bucket List while we are there. I’ll either get to play the 11th best course in the nation, or the best. Amazing.Now the photo - I thought that I had better get in some ‘Practice’ this afternoon playing Pebble. Needless to say I can’t play it as well as my alter ego on Tiger Woods ’12 on the Play Station, but just knowing that I’ll be getting to play a ‘Video Game Course’ is just mind-boggling for me.