On Saturday morning, a couple of friends (including occasional Qwowi contributor, Tony Siano) and I will be heading south to Ocean City Maryland for 4 days of golf.  While the trip itself has nothing to do with Qwowi, I’ll be posting some course reviews (and god knows what else) while I’m down there.

While planning the trip I was shocked at the general (total) lack of thorough reviews of the area courses.  Given that Ocean City is sometimes referred to as Myrtle Beach light, I thought there would be plenty already written about some of the area courses – turns out I was wrong.  I had always planned on writing course reviews anyway, so you can expect to see those popping up early next week.

As far as the itinerary is concerned, we booked the trip through the Harrison Group.  Obviously I can’t yet say how it turned out, but I’m satisfied with the price we got, as well as the level of service from Harrison.  Emails were promptly returned, and most importantly, Dawn (our account rep) was awesome about reworking our itinerary several times over in order to accommodate our…let’s call them “evolving” needs.

Our golf schedule breaks down like this:

• Saturday – Eagles Landing
• Sunday – Ocean City Golf Club Newport Bay Course
• Monday – Glen Riddle Man ‘O War
• Tuesday – Baywood Greens (Delaware)

The guys I’m traveling with aren’t quite as enthusiastic about golf as I am, but I’m hoping at least one of them will join me for another 18 holes on Saturday and/or Sunday.  Ocean City Golf Club has a second course (Seaside), which could be interesting.  Monday, however, has the more appealing replay possibilities with either Glen Riddle’s War Admiral, or The Links at Lighthouse Sound (from what I gather, Lighthouse is the premier course in Ocean City) as options.  We’ve also heard great things about Baywood.

While I had hoped to have some demo clubs to play with on my trip, the contents of my bag will be largely unchanged from what I carry week to week.  My TaylorMade R7 SuperQuad driver will be joined by a pair of PING G10 fairway woods, and my Titleist 585H hybrid.  I’m still carrying my Callaway X-20 Tour irons, but there’s a good possibility I’ll be replacing them with either a full set of Mizuno MX-200s or a mix of the MX-200s and Mizuno’s MP-52 irons when I return.  3 Vokey wedges will be along for the ride, as will my beloved Mizuno Bettinardi BC-1 putter.

As you may know, I’ve reviewed a few OGIO bags over the last couple of years, which give me the luxury of having a few bags to choose from for my trip.  If I had any plans for walking, I’d bring the Nexos stand bag, but since this is a riding vacation, and I’ll need to carry enough gear to cover any situation, I’ve decided on the Atlas cart bag.  Actually, the decision wasn’t that hard.  Where capacity is the concern, the Atlas is king.

Finally, I’ll be carrying a selection of premium golf balls.  I’m going to use the trip as an opportunity to play some of the newer balls that I’ve been dying to try.  Rather than pay full price, I picked up a selection of balls from LostGolfBalls.com.  I’ve used balls from them before and have never been disappointed by the quality.  The huge savings over buying new gives me a chance to try a greater variety of balls.   If you’re a guy like me; one who likes the feel and performance of a premium ball, but who doesn’t always play well enough to keep your $4 investment in play as well as you’d like, or you enjoy trying out every new ball on the market, LostGolfBalls.com can save you a ton of cash without having to compromise on quality.

All told I’ll be bringing about 4 dozen balls with me (hopefully that will be enough).  The Zipperless Ball Pouch on my Atlas will be loaded with Callaway Tour i and Tour ix, Bridgestone e7+ and B330-RX (can’t wait to try this ball), and in case I hate all of them, I’ll have a few TaylorMade TP Reds and, of course, a few Titleist ProV1s to put into play.  Yeah…this is going to be fun.

Tomorrow I’ll give you a rundown of all of the cool gadgets, accessories, apparel, and other gear that will be making the trip with me as well.