Golf Views

What do you get when you combine a non-traditional golf Scramble, casino gaming, and awesome prizes? You get the Puma Open. On July 24, 2008 I had the opportunity to attend the second annual Puma Open in Chicago, IL at Harborside International. The Puma Open is not your typical golf outing, where you play a standard Scramble, instead your four-person team must compete in a nine hole Scramble with special “Puma Open rules” on each hole.

What are those rules?

Here is a quick breakdown of my favorite holes I played at the Puma Open:

Hole # 10 Don Julio Know Your Tequila: Tee off with vintage wooden driver. A word of advice, don’t have Margaritas on an empty stomach and expect to play well. I had a blast playing this hole with a nice buzz from the Don Julio Margarita, which didn’t help hide the fact that I couldn’t hit the vintage wooden driver to save my life. 

Hole # 12 Draw: Draw a card from the dealer and play with that club ONLY for the entire hole..this includes putting. I drew a nine iron on this really long hole and it was the first time I ever putted with my nine iron.

Hole # 16 On the Clock: Team score on this hole is based on your time-score does not matter. The team to complete this hole in the shortest time wins a prize. This hole was so much fun to play, even with two players. What made this hole really cool, is that your given a RCA portable video camera to tape the hole. We didn’t have the shortest time, but we had fun playing this hole.

Hole # 17 Almost Golf “Hail Mary”: One player from your team will hit Almost Golf balls to their teammates to catch in a designated area. This hole was another one of my favorite holes to play, watch the video and see how its done.

I’ve never had so much fun playing nine holes of golf before in my entire life, from drinking Margaritas, playing an entire hole with one club, and sprinting across the golf course. After all this excitement on the course, you begin the second part of the event which included an awesome dinner buffet and casino night.  

Casino Night and Gaming

The second part of the Puma Open consists of the casino night with gaming.  Each team starts out with the same amount of chips ($500 Puma Dollars per player) in the casino portion of the event. Each player has a choice of various table games to play, from Black Jack, Texas Hold-em, and Roulette.  I opted to use my Puma Dollars to play Black Jack and ended up with $3000 in Puma Dollars at the end of the evening, way short of the winning team that had $67, 000 in Puma Dollars. My team would have done better but my teammate Mark was not a very good Black Jack player, considering he never played before. I had a blast at playing Black Jack during the casino portion of the event, it reminded me of being in Las Vegas, but without my own money on the line.  

Prizes

At the end of the evening prizes were given to teams with best overall score, most Puma Dollars at the casino event, and overall winning team.  The winning team from Chicago Puma Open is placed in a random drawing with the other five winners of the other regional events for a chance of winning the grand prize trip to Maxim Bungalows in the Dominican Republic. 

Bottom line, I had a blast attending the Puma Open in Chicago, IL and you will too. It was an event like no other.  I really can’t wait to attend next year’s Puma Open when comes through Chicago again.  If there’s a Puma Open in your area, make sure to register your team, you won’t regret taking part in an excellent event, put on by a great company.  Future Puma Open’s include the following locations: Boston, MA August 16th, Fort Lauderdale, FL September 19th, and Austin TX October 3rd.

For more information visit the Puma Open Website