Everything is a commercial. This whole blog is just one big advertisement for the retail golf courses we have played it the eight years since Donna got me a package of six lessons at a local muni in South Florida.

When I took up golf, it took a little while to realize that the whole game is one big ad for products: clubs, bags, uniforms, courses, shoes. Little did I know how fast I could master the art of trying to purchase a game. I embraced it with a fervor and became a retail golfer*.

To strive for the perfect stroke, spend I did. To play a top course or stay at a five-star resort, spend we did. Every once in a while in the depths of the Great Golf Industry Depression of 2007-2010, I felt that we were keeping golf afloat all by ourselves. But guilt fades on the green grass of the putting green.

There is joy in the perfect iron to the green from 136 yards out; happiness on the first tee of a new course; perhaps sublimity when the ball falls in for an eagle, but the excitement of a new club in my hands, all shiny and unmarked… and you can trade-in new clubs for the latest clubs on the Hot List. There is no limit to the money spent trying to achieve more distance or become a better putter.

Well, we do love to travel and play golf. We are avid golfers who play at least every Saturday and Sunday, in most any weather and whenever else we can. We do tend to purchase an item or two or three at the courses we enjoyed playing, sometimes spending more on merchandise than the golf. And we are compelled to play the five star courses just to experience them, so I guess we qualify as Retail Golfers.

*Retail Golfers comes from a DVD that the marketing people at Bandon Dunes sent us to promote the Grand Opening of the Old McDonald course: golfers who travel to play the elite courses and basically spent a lot of money doing it.