This year, we’re teaming up with an amazing charity, Sibling Connections (www.siblingconnections.org). Sibling Connections brings together children separated through foster care by offering year-round weekend programs and a week-long summer camp, called Camp To Belong. Our webmaster has been volunteering at Camp To Belong and Sibling Connections for a number of years and we’re honored that they have allowed us to support their amazing cause with our golf tournament.

For those of you that have played in our tournament before, you can expect much of the same amazing-ness that has made you love our tournament in the past. If you’re new to our tourney, here is some of what you can expect

• Closest to the pin
• Longest drive
• Hole-in-One
• Beat the pro
• Putting contest
• 50/50 raffle
• Silent auction
• Raffle
• Cash prizes!
• Catered lunch AND dinner

Our past tournaments have been a blast, but we’re kicking it up a notch this year. We don’t expect everyone to be able to support this cause, but not everyone donates in a year. It’s kind of like donating blood. Not everyone donates blood mainly because they’ve never really been asked to before. We aren’t approaching this tournament as a hard sell. Many of you are going to golf because you love the tournament that we are able to put on. Many of you won’t play, but it doesn’t mean that you or your company can’t purchase sponsorship. If you are able, please consider a sponsorship or donation to our raffle.

Our last tournament, we were joined by former boxing champion Marlon “Magic Man” Starling. We’re working our contacts this year to see just who we can have join us this year. Stay tuned as we’ll keep you updated on our progress. If you have a connection to someone, let us know!

In the meantime, download our tournament flyer here and reserve your spot today!

http://www.countryclubcritics.com/documents/ccc_flyer_2011_email.pdf

With this latest update, we’re going to call the site released and start connecting with more and more people in the golf community, just in time for a gorgeous, golf filled, Fourth of July weekend!

Whether you are checking out our site for the first time or are a repeat visitor, take the opportunity and register for the community on the site, “like” us on Facebook, or “follow” us on twitter. Whichever you’re preferred method to stay connected, consider us to be a part of your network.

We hope you all have a great Fourth of July weekend, stay safe, play a round or two, and take a moment to reflect on the meaning of “independence”.

JR

Hopefully you have noticed the new reviews and updates that have been going up on the site. In March, I visited family in Florida and managed to get two rounds in at Eagles Marsh Golf Club and Savanna Golf Club.

The last two weeks have had me playing two previously rated courses. Bayberry Hills in West Yarmouth, MA was first rated in 2007, and they did make a bunch of improvements which pushed there rating up a bit. Chicopee Country Club in Chicopee, MA received no change to their rating, which was first added to our site in 2006.

If you’ve played any of the courses we’ve rated, please add your own comments to the courses rating.

Looking on the horizon, we hope to be releasing a fun new feature to the site in the coming weeks, where you will be able to submit your rating to us! Keep an eye out for that release!

JR

Enter Harvey.

Harvey actually designed the first first coming of CountryClubCritics.com and really did an amazing job to create something that would be easy to hand off to me to continue maintaining. I guess, fortunately for CCC, Harvey had to make a quick trip back home from North Carolina and he really needed a drink one night. So i picked him up (this is going somewhere, I promise), and we went to The People’s Pint in Greenfield to discuss a slew of things about the web, social media, and where we could make things fit and maybe make a buck, or at least get some free beer.

It wasn’t even on the table to discuss, but Harvey wanted to talk about CCC. He brought to the table some great thoughts about an immediate re-design and how to create user integration that could help us greatly increase the number of courses on our site. And the more we drank the fine ales, the longer our list of possible things we could do with the site grew.

It only took 5 minutes out of a casino trip with Ross to convince him that a redesign was necessary if we were to move CCC in any direction. So it was done, we brought Harvey on board as a partner and set him loose to create a new logo and redesign the site.

Taking advantage of the open WordPress platform, Harvey has constructed the base for a whole new world of CountryClubCritics.com. Mind you, we all work on this site in between doing the things that put food on the table, but Harvey has really put a lot of time to getting us to where we are. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Sign up with us today to be a part of an evolving community of golfers that enjoy the game, but also enjoy their experience at a course. Upcoming upgrades to the site will include the functionality for users to rate courses that we’ve rated and compare, as well as submitting ratings for courses we do not have listed.

We love feedback, so please feel free to shoot us a message through the contact page, on twitter @CCCritics or on FaceBook at /CountryClubCritics

Best wishes on a fun golf season.

~Jason

ps. I’m heading to the Cape next weekend to try to repeat last years hole-in-one. Wish me luck!