I’m just going to write what everyone else is thinking…Orlando is the tackiest city on the eastern seaboard. With no beach, no truly great golf, and nothing but Disney, Disney, Disney for two hours in every direction, why do we do this to ourselves every year?
This is the golf show of the year. Every gadgeteer from all across America has club professional, industry executives and other businessmen trapped for three days in a gigantic conference certer as a captive audience. Everyone will be simply dying to play a few rounds. Everyone will gasp like a teenager over a new Dave Matthews CD at every equipment booth. Old friends will reunite for a bit of vacationing and work with golf, golf, golf as the centerpiece.
But what happens instead? We get crappy golf. I said it, garbage. Orange County National is over priced and overrated. It’s no different than every other Florida course in the cookie cutter. We deserve better. It’s as flavorless as tapioca pudding.
We get a crappy city. OK, so Orlando sprawls wide enough to fir everyone in hotel rooms and has enough McSteakhouses and a few places like Hemingway’s for truly fine dining, but it’s not New York…or San Diego…or Austin…or Scottsdale. We’re supposed to be in Florida, so where’s the beach and sunshine? Why must I subject myself to a six-hour round (six hours!), wearing five layers on a marginal course watching some group of lugnuts searching through palm fronds and lakeside reeds like male versions of Jacqueline Gagne? Last year I froze so badly, I walked off the course after 16 holes rather than watch three groups per hole in front of me swinging like Charles Barkley.
Note to the PGA: there’s better golf out there. There’s better cities with finer dining and as many convention centers and hotel rooms. And I don’t mean Vegas!
I would feel alot better about going to the show if I got more out of it for my time and money. Orlando makes me wish I’d gone anywhere else. San Diego would love to have us, so let’s punt the bush-league, Mickey Mouse stuff. Make what is supposed to be a premiere week for the industry in something memorable. Make us excited to spend five days inside in a convention center because we can play some great golf. We could have Torrey Pines, Barton Creek, The Boulders, We-Ko-Pa, (stop me anytime). Instead it’s a two-hour drive west to World Woods or a two-hour drive northeast to Sawgrass. Come on people, let’s think outside the box and see exactly how far we can fly this puppy. Orlando? We need our heads examined.
Rant over, as you were.
You forgot to mention the atmosphere in Orlando and I really mean it. It stinks. What is that smell?
The water makes me ill. It smells like rotten swamp mud. Drink bottled water in Orlando folks.
The hotel rooms are disgusting in Orlando. They’re all hammered from the millions of families who jam 14 kids in a room for their Disney trip. The rooms stink of thousands of rotten food items and dirty diapers, cleaned off with rotten swamp water.