A Priceless Golf Experience With My Dad #PricelessGolf #MC

Surprises! I’m a freak about them! I love them! So, it was time to get my dad in on the action! MasterCard was about to help me give him a Priceless Golf Experience!

For his birthday he and I were heading to the AT&T National in Bethesda, MD! He had no idea he was going to have a priceless golf experience! When I handed him his birthday card with the tickets in it, his reaction was exactly what I’d hoped for! He was pretty stoked and his smile let me know it! So we started making our plans for that Saturday! He informed me we’d be taking his Miata and that he’d be getting a new hat! Dads! =)

Early Saturday morning we made sure we were somewhat matched. Who knew a dad would care about our outfits meshing?! lol We got into his Miata, top down, sunglasses on, and off we went. His buddy, who he goes golfing with, called us on our way there to check in on us. I have to admit, I was a bit excited that my dad could show this day off to his buddies. The three golfing guys always seem to be try to one-up each other and come home with some great golfing “stories”. Well, my dad had a whopper!

We got to our parking area and took a shuttle to the Congressional Country Club. Oh my gosh, this place was insane! When you hear about country clubs or see them in movies, THIS is what they’re talking about and you’d imagine. It was so posh and grand! I felt like I had been transported into an amazing world. We walked around the grounds for a while watching some of the golfers on the practice  greens. We made our way to the 18 Green Skybox.

We were right at the end of the 18th hole! The Skybox was extremely long and we were about 3/4 of the way down from the tee. In the picture above, the 18th hole is a stone’s throw from the rail! Being in this private Skybox, we were given seats in the MasterCard “Best Seats in the House”. Two couples showed up because they won seats by texting during the Tour! The couple who sat in front of us had been sitting on the grass and said they’d been sitting in the same place last year and the gal had gotten really sunburned.

Well, have no fear. No sunburn this year! We not only had an extremely long private, covered Skybox, each sponsored section had their own tvs to watch the game as it progressed! We even had a view of the 10th hole where about 1/2 of the people started. In the picture above, people saw this guy and kept thinking it was Tiger Woods. From the profile, totally could see it, but he turned towards us once and no way, no how was it him, but people were still taking pics! lol

As soon as we got settled in, dad and I decided to have some lunch. We didn’t have to go far because we had catered meals. There was also a drink bar. I was in heaven with my Pepsi and dad had a beer. We could go up as much as we wanted. The food and drink overfloweth! Oh, and there were coolers full of individual ice cream bars! YUM! It was a rather warm day and thankfully, there were fans at the top of each section.

We had to sit for quite some time because the first set of golfers who started at hole 10 didn’t make it over to us for a couple of hours I think it was. It was so exciting when we saw our first golf ball go whizzing by! We thought we had the best seats because they were out of the sun, but as the afternoon went on, we realized the seats right by the railing were the best for viewing the 18th hole. Not even kidding when one golf ball ricocheted off of a sign towards the end of our Skybox! Someone from the green actually gave the ball to a spectator! It was so cool!

There were several spots available in our section and everyone kept playing musical chairs for the spots they wanted to sit in. It was interesting because you almost had this air about you that you could do whatever you wanted. Hey, we were all in the MasterCard section! lol It was a very relaxed atmosphere and so extremely enjoyable.

OH. MY. GOSH! The bathrooms. Ok, let’s talk bathrooms, or porta-potties as it were. So, you’re at this country club, in this awesome Skybox and then you have…dun dun duuuuun, the potties. Well, a girl’s gotta go, so I went. Well, let me tell YOU…this is not a porta-potty you have eh-ver been in! You open the metal door and you’re transported to the swankiest bathroom you can imagine! I’m not kidding. It was as nice as my mom’s fancy house bathroom! lol Needless to say, we were highly impressed! Best Seats in the House I’m tellin’ you!

After we had lunch, yes back to the food, they started taking it all away. I was looking at it wondering why they were taking my food away. Whew, thank goodness they were just bringing in an entirely NEW selection! Yay us!

Golfers kept going by and we were trying to figure out who everyone was because the kid with the names sometimes went too close to our Skybox. lol At one point I decided to do some investigating and it turned out, you could actually stand at the end of the Skybox by the 18th hole and have a great view like the one above. And…this was the cool part, as the golfers left the course, they left RIGHT next to us! You could go down and they’d shake a hand, take a picture, etc. It was so cool!

It was so exciting as the top players began coming around to our hole. Dad was naming them and telling me a bit about them. He also kept looking up their stats on his phone. Yes, dad has a golf app on his phone! He was finding out how old they were, how long they’d played, what their standings were and how much they’d made since being professional golfers! It was so fun!

Some of the golfers clothes were so crazy and bright! Somehow I forsee my dad going this route. Now, mind you, he’s been golfing only a couple of years and needs to work his way into it! A couple of the caddies looked like they were going to keel over from the heat! They were probably thrilled it was the 18th hole! See the person on the green closest to the rail? That’s a gal! She was the only one we saw the entire day! Kudos to her!

At the end of the tournament, we wound our way up the hill to the Pro Shop. Poor dad was still searching for the elusive golf hat. He has a specific one in mind, but it has to sit exactly right. Well, the clubhouse didn’t have the style he was looking for so we walked away without a hat. MasterCard, though, didn’t let us go empty handed. We were given chair cushions to go along with the “Best Seats in the House” theme. They were pretty awesome!

We took the shuttle back to dad’s car and we headed home talking about the entire experience pretty much the whole way. It was a spectacular day.

Now, let me address the whole MasterCard experiences you can have. And I‘m not just talking golf. They way we were treated and the truly priceless time we had, you just can NOT beat it. The chance to win amazing opportunities, to create your own experience simply from being a card holder makes it SO worthwhile. I mean, you have a credit card and because of that, MasterCard will give you experiences that you could only dream about!! That’s exactly what this day was for me and my dad. No way could I put a price tag on that and quite honestly, doing these experiences is completely worth the cost because of the enjoyment you get to have while doing it!

You can’t put a price tag on the bonding my dad and I did. I checked out the MasterCard site and there are so many opportunities around the world and the list is constantly growing! It makes me excited for all of the possibilities!

Yes, I realize I’ve written a novella here, but the day was fabulous and I want to convey that as much as I can. If you’ve read this far, you’re stellar and I hope you can see that being a MasterCard holder, you can be in my shoes! You can see the rest of the day I spent with my dad in my Google + album!