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"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
online golf column
by
Chris Dortch
April 17, 2010
The daughter
of long-time PGA and Champions tour stalwart Gibby Gilbert has
entered the family business. But unlike brother Gibby III, she’s
not earning a living with golf clubs.
Gloves are
Melissa Cain’s stock in trade. It’s a pursuit that at once seems
out of left field and completely logical. The birth of her first
child—a daughter named, appropriately enough, Gibbie-Kay—was the
catalyst.
“She
couldn’t work and wanted something to do,” Gilbert said. “One day
I just got the idea of monogramming golf gloves.”
“It was
partly influenced by my love of monogramming,” Cain said. “I took
his idea and ran with it. I’d never used an embroidery machine or
even sewed for that matter, but I didn’t have anything to lose.”
Ironically,
Cain never played golf, but she was exposed to the game at a young
age. The chance to earn her living in a golf-related business
intrigued her.
“I’m no more
familiar with the sport than the next guy, but the personalizing
of golf gloves really struck my interest,” she said. “And after [a
lot of] trial and error, I finally got it right.”
Apparently,
Cain has some marketing acumen, too. She’s already selling gloves
at her own website,
www.CustomGolfGloveDesigns.com, and several other personalized
gift websites. Cain sells a lot of gloves with a single initial or
name in cursive or block font, but she prides herself on being
able to duplicate just about anything a customer can imagine onto
a golf glove.
“We can
digitize and monogram any company name, school team, charity
event, golf course logo, tournament name, etc.,” she said. “If you
can send me the file, I can monogram it.”
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The local
golf season kicks off next week with the Brainerd Invitational,
and the entry deadline is April 20. Players can enter at the club
pro shop or online here at
www.ifyoulikegolf.com.
The
tournament will feature the normal blue tee championship stroke
play division, as well as white tee and gold divisions using a
Stableford scoring "points' system.
The Brainerd
will be quickly followed by the Red Bud at Valleybrook (May 1-2)
and the Signal Mountain Invitational (14-16).
This website
will provide pairings and scores every day and full final-round
coverage of all three tournaments.
The
Chattanooga area will play host to its share of significant events
this season, starting with the NCAA Men’s Championship at The
Honors June 1-6. This will be the second time The Honors has
hosted that event. The first was 1996, and the lure of Tiger Woods
playing in his final collegiate event attracted record crowds.
Woods hadn’t given any indications he would turn pro after his
sophomore season, but most assumed he was ready, and they were
right.
Cleveland
Golf and Country Club will host the Tennessee Golf Association’s
women’s amateur June 21-25, and Chattanooga Golf and Country Club
will host the TGA’s match play championship July 13-16.
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If you
haven’t checked out the TGA’s new digital magazine, Tennessee
Golf Quarterly, yet, give it a click
here.
Full
disclosure: I contributed a couple of pieces to the magazine. But
what the heck, read it anyway. For the last 15 years or so, the
TGA has been on the cutting edge of providing its more than 35,000
members a full battery of services, and the magazine is just
another example. You’ll be impressed.
“We are
extremely excited to release our new digital magazine,” said Matt
Vanderpool, the TGA’s executive director, “and we hope it will
become a valuable resource for our members and the
Tennessee
golf community.”
The TGA
makes use of some of the latest technology to produce the magazine
in its digital only format. Tennessee Golf Quarterly will
be released January, April, July and October. Each issue will
feature the latest news and tournament results from around the
state along with regular features such as Rules of the Game,
Lesson Tee, Tennessee Golf Hall of Fame Profile, Agronomy Update,
Championship Site Profile and other feature stories.
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