Golf and Nascar are like Peas and Carrots
Last December I was asked if I wanted to co-chair a 2 day women’s invitational golf tournament the following summer. After no thought about how difficult of a task I was undertaking, I quickly said, “Yes!”
The theme was something that had never been picked before (at least as far as we know and everyone we talked to said they had never heard of it).
NASCAR!
Hours were put into the planning and meetings to pull this off. We needed prizes for all the on course contests, hole sponsors, a prize for the best decorated golf carts, and a pit stop prize (over 2 days, which team could use the bathroom between 9 holes the fastest!)
An entire afternoon was spent driving from car dealership to car dealership, trying to find hole sponsors and a hole-in-one car sponsor. A few days after that afternoon we received a phone call from Mercedes saying they were interested in sponsoring the hole-in-one car and also provided us with prizes for the three other par 3 holes on the course, in case one of them had a hole in one. Day two we were sponsored by a Chrysler dealership, who also gave us prizes for all four of the par 3 holes.
With an event theme such as this, we knew we had to go above and beyond what anyone was expecting. There had been groans when the idea was first introduced because why in the world would a bunch of women want to participate in a golf tournament with a NASCAR theme? Even I was unsure about it when the idea was introduced—I know NOTHING about NASCAR.
We did find there were a few NASCAR fans among our friends. One woman in particular let us borrow 4 cardboard cut outs of race car drivers she had sitting in her basement! Another family friend who works at Fathead gave us a bunch of irregular race car/NASCAR fatheads for us to use to decorate. They couldn’t be sold to the general public because of their irregularities. We even had a friend of ours park her mobile home by the bag drop with a giant sign welcoming people to the course.
The day of the tournament, players were greeted when you first drove up to the golf course with multicolored race flags set up, blowing in the wind. There was also a giant “Welcome Race Fans” sign that was donated by a local company.
We had a local race car driver park his race car next to the green. Team pictures were taken next to his car with him. When we were told to head off to our tee, there was a countdown and at the end of the countdown he roared his engine. It was very, very loud! “Racefans…start your engines!”
Before the tournament had even started, my co-chair and I were getting compliments about how amazing everything looked. My co-chair and I were thrilled with the response, but knew we had 2 days of play to get through before we could celebrate what we pulled off.
By the end of the second day, we were being asked to put on the tournament again next year! We politely declined! Since then we have received emails and even a card thanking us for putting on one of the best tournaments in recent years.
It was a lot of fun to put together, taking an idea that seemed completely irrational for a golf club. If you’ve seen Caddyshack II, there’s a line where the daughter says to her Dad, “You took a beautiful country club and turned it into Coney Island!”
Yes, yes we did! And we had a darn good time!
