Golf Girl Celebrates 40th Anniversary With Makeover

Original album cover illustration by Anne-Marie Anderson

I'd been playing golf for almost a year... and writing about the game here at Golf Girl's Diary for several months... when a fellow golf blogger told me about Golf Girl: the song.

Actually, he sent me a link that led to a grainy YouTube video featuring a live recording of what turned out to be an enchantingly whimsical song by a band called Caravan.  At the time I was unfamiliar with the band... and unaware of the Canterbury Scene an early 70s era progressive rock movement out of Canterbury, England that Caravan was a major part of.

Style-wise the era was characterized by psychedelia, lots of long hair and extreme bell bottoms (you'll see that in the video after the jump) but the thing that really amazed me were the song's silly/sweet lyrics... and the fact that Pat, the Golf Girl who inspired the song, shares my name. 


Of course Golf Girl went to the top of my playlist as soon as I heard it, and has remained there ever since. Then, just a few days ago, I read that Caravan was releasing a special deluxe edition of  In The Land Of Grey And Pink , the album that introduced Golf Girl.  The remastered, remixed three-disc set, coincides with the 40th anniversary of Grey And Pink, and contains numerous bonus tracks. It's available at your local retailer or online at HMV, Amazon and Universal Vinyl. You can also order it via their Facebook page.

Now for that ultra-retro video - Rock on Golf Girl!

GolfGirl Infographics - 2011 Masters, Early Picks

Infographics are awesome.  Marketers love them - that's a given - but so do regular folks, and these days they're everywhere; offering a whimsical visual representation of virtually anything,  from the cause of jet lag... to the cost of a latte... to the demographics of the internet.

At their simplest infographics are merely charts or graphs,  but they can also be compelling works of an illustrator's art. 



The Masters begins in a week and already it's THE major topic of conversation in golf. The tournament's distinctive history and unique traditions... combined with the wealth of statistics that come out of it each year makes it quiet "infographically friendly".

I've put together a quick word visualization infographic (above) based on early 2011 Masters picks (about 60). I culled them from predictions posted in the forum at sandtrap.com  and randomly on Twitter.  Yes, Tiger dominates, thus his name kind of stands out on the above. Phil Mickelson, Bubba Watson and Nick Watson were also popular, then came Dustin Johnson, Graeme McDowell ... and so on.  The tiniest names had only been picked by one fan as of Wednesday 4/30 PM.  The pie below can only accomodate a few of the top picks.  I must work on that.  Anyway it's a start.

I have a feeling I'll be creating a few more visual representations of the 2011 Masters before it's over.

 

 Also...

3 votes - Hunter Mahan
2 votes each - Lee~Westwood, Anthony~Kim, Rickie~Fowler, Rory~Mcilroy, Luke~Donald, K.J.~Choi
1 vote each - Sergio~Garcia, Miguel~Jiminez, Angel~Cabrera, Ryo~Ishikawa, Ian~Poulter, Ernie~Els, Alvaro~Quiros, Justin~Rose,  Ricky~Barnes, Mark~Wilson, Steve~Stricker, Retief~Goose, Francesco~Molinari

Golf Club Cutie and a Weekend Facelift

Two human years, it's been theorized, is like 10 in blog years, which means Golf Girl's Diary is approaching 45... and I realized a few days ago that the time had come for a facelift.

I didn't want to do anything radical, just a quick fix to reverse the signs of aging... without down time or risk of complications, if you know what I mean...and if you've ever inadvertently messed up the coding on your blog, you do.



Hence the weekend facelift and a slightly new look for Golf Girl's Diary. I'll probably continue to tinker around with it for a while, and eventually I'll go for the extreme makeover with a board certified designer, but for the time being I'm getting used to the new look and feeling quite... rejuvenated.  Plus, I had an amazing amount of fun with the color selection tool I used.

If you love color, you'll love COLOURlovers. It's a kind of social network where members "create and share colors, palettes and patterns to nurture their ongoing love affair with color" and it's built around a powerful suite of color scheme and pattern generation tools.  You can generate your look from a photo or illustration too. I got the color scheme for this blog by uploading my Golf Girl Media logo.

When you come up with a color palette you can name it and share it with others.  The funniest part was went I did a search for golf and came up an awesome selection of eclectic color schemes. Below are just a few of hundreds of golf related palettes:


Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Color by COLOURlovers

Yes, I'm totally in love with COLOURlover.

Meanwhile, Sergio Garcia Plays Poker in Paradise

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While the 2011 PGA Tour season began Thursday with the Hyundai Tournament of Champions on the paradisical Plantation Course at Kapalua, another kind of Paradise was in the cards for Sergio Garcia.

The field in Hawaii was limited to 2010 PGA Tour winners, so Señor Garcia didn't qualify, however the spirited Spaniard did qualify for a different sort of tournament... a poker tournament.

The popular professional golfer... still affectionately referred to as El Niño... got ready to celebrate his 31st birthday yesterday at the Atlantis Resort and Casino on Paradise Island in The Bahamas, by playing Texas Hold'em at the PokerStars Caribbean Adventure .

Garcia, who in 2008 was ranked second in the world, has had some well-documented... um... issues with golf of late, culminating in a two month hiatus from the sport last fall.

Well, it seems he may have spent some of his self-imposed sabbatical honing his poker skills, because at Atlantis,  he was one of 28 players who won their way into day 1A of the Main Event.



"It is good fun and it is all a learning process for me" Sergio explained to CardPlayer 's Ryan Lucchesi when he was eliminated at the end of level 4.  And he made it quite clear that this foray into the world of high stakes poker did not signal career change when he added, "I know what I do for a living and that is playing golf. I don’t forget that."

Photo via CardPlayer.com
Video via PokerNews.com