Since my priority membership doesn't include Bonifay and I live in the southern area I thought that's where I'll go. Knowing they only have 18 holes instead of 27 like most courses in the southern area, I got up at 5:30 and headed out at 7:00 to get in line as a single. I arrived at the Destin starter shack at 7:15 and I counted the carts in front of me and it was 27 carts. Most of the carts had 2 golfers, so that would mean two carts per teetime and 27 divided by 2 meant there was 13 teetimes ahead of me, and this is at 7:15. I figured at 8 minutes apart I had about a two hour wait.
At about 7:30 one of the starters said if anybody wants to play just nine holes, go to the Ft. Walton starter shack about 50 yards up the hill. About 7 carts pulled out of line and decided to go for the nine hole deal. Now things were looking better. Most everyone in line stood outside their carts and were in friendly conversation with everyone, I even had some Steelers fans behind me try to give me a hard time since my cart has Ravens stickers on it. Then a starter came back and asked if there was any singles, because they had a threesome. I said that would be me, and he said this is your lucky day. I then waved ado to the Steelers fans and got in my cart and headed to the front of the line.
We teed off at 8:00 so my wait was only 45 minutes. The others in the threesome said they arrived about 6:30. The only downside was I had to ride with another golfer who was a chain smoker and I myself smoked for 35 years until I quit five years ago. I told him it didn't bother me, and I looked at it as a bit of a challenge.
I found that Bonifay had wide fairways and not many trees, the biggest obstacles were bunkers, which I managed to land in six, and some water. Even thought I didn't play that well I still managed to shoot an 84 from the blue tees on my first time seeing the course, so it's not all that difficult. I would say it's the easiest of the championship courses south of 466 but was enjoyable.
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