{"id":1130,"date":"2010-12-12T01:23:59","date_gmt":"2010-12-12T08:23:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/robertfagan.com\/?p=1130"},"modified":"2011-05-23T16:05:11","modified_gmt":"2011-05-23T23:05:11","slug":"lost-balls-for-a-great-cause-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/golf\/courses-and-travel\/1130\/lost-balls-for-a-great-cause-2","title":{"rendered":"Lost Balls for a Great Cause"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Would you feel better if your lost golf balls went to a great cause?\u00a0 Well, I hate to lose a golf ball, but recently the sting proved not so painful.\u00a0 In a trip to the greater Gulf Shores, Alabama area, I was introduced to wonderful concept that may not be completely unique, but might be more vigorously copied.<\/p>\n

The Lost Key Golf Club is an honored Audubon Sanctuary golf course designed by the Arnold Palmer organization where most golfers are apt to donate a ball or two a round \u2013 or more to the ubiquitous wetlands that line every hole. The facility does something truly useful with these reclaimed \u201cpearls.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0When Director of Golf Michael Howard, a retired Marine, explained what they did with the found balls, it put a whole new positive meaning to the experience, erasing some of the sting from losing a ball.<\/p>\n

Lost Key hires a couple of people annually to retrieve the golf balls.\u00a0 They then clean, box, and ship them to Iraq and now Afghanistan so that our troops there can enjoy hitting them.\u00a0 While some already play the game, many others are being introduced to it and relish the chance to relax while serving our Country.\u00a0 The Lost Key golf community also raises money for patches of Astroturf so our armed forces have something to hit off of.\u00a0 This obviously creates a nice change of pace for our troops while growing the game.<\/p>\n

Our troops, however, take this all a step further.\u00a0 They ask of themselves a donation fee for the privilege of hitting the balls and with that money, they donate it to the local causes over there to help the people they are protecting and trying to free.\u00a0 Wow!\u00a0 My golf ball may end up providing assistance to an orphan or a school in Afghanistan while also providing some needed relief to our men and women in the armed services!<\/p>\n

When our troops are not only sacrificing their time and risking their lives for freedom, but are also so giving at the same time, it causes me to ask,\u00a0 \u201cHow can you or I do likewise?\u201d\u00a0 Congratulations to the Lost Key Golf Club for literally getting the ball back into play!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Would you feel better if your lost golf balls went to a great cause?\u00a0 Well, I hate to lose a… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":41,"featured_media":1612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[334,2883,17],"tags":[4381,4382,4383],"class_list":["post-1130","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-golf-bits","category-courses-and-travel","tag-lost-key-golf-club","tag-audubon-scanctuary","tag-michael-howard"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/33\/2010\/12\/lost-key-gc.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/41"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1130"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3749,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1130\/revisions\/3749"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theaposition.com\/robertfagan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}