The third weekend of October I got the amazing opportunity to attend the affiliate network, ShareASale’s annual ThinkTank event held this year at the luxurious Pelican Hill Resort in Newport Coast, California. The ThinkTank event brings together a variety of merchants, web publishers and companies in the internet marketing space to help each other improve, grow and network in an exclusive small group setting. My entire weekend was paid for by ShareASale and all I can say is that it was probably the most fun and productive weekend I have had in ages.

As a way to kick off the weekend, ShareASale hosted a golf event at Pelican Hill’s Golf Course. It didn’t matter to me that I was totally sleep deprived (after getting up at 3 am to catch a flight from the East Coast to the West Coast), I was so in on this golf game! My husband and I decided it was too expensive and too much hassle to bring our own clubs so we used the course’s rentals. Let me tell you, I may have a new set of clubs in my future. The rentals were NIKE Lady Sumo clubs and even with as tired as I was, I had the best game ever (for me). I loved the way the Nike Lady Sumo clubs felt – so much better than the ones I have at home.

One of the real treats about playing Pelican Hill was that we had our own forecaddy, “K”. He was super helpful in letting us know how far from the hole we were; gave us some great tips on swing, stance and club choice; and had a super great sense of humor – which was definitely needed considering that my husband and I had been traveling all day and the third member of our group, Asif  from GoldenCAN, was totally new to golf!

A funny side note – I forgot to bring a hair tie with me to the golf course and it was pretty breezy that day. I went into the pro shop to see if I could buy one, but they didn’t sell them. Fortunately for me, one of the ladies that worked there just happened to have an extra hair tie on her wrist and gladly gave it to me. We decided that there was something about the “sisterhood of the hair tie” and that we had to look after each other when it came to taming our tresses!

We played the Ocean South course which had amazing views of the Pacific Ocean and the homes overlooking the coast. The course was beautiful with such a variety of vegetation – from brush gardens to sage and eucalyptus trees – and plenty of sand traps. I loved the variety in the individual holes, as well. Some were nice long straight aways while others required you to pitch over valleys, work your way around sharp curves or read the green for the perfect putt. Oh, and did I mention that with the course being so close to the ocean that what you thought the ball would do on any given green was not necessarily right – thanks to the gravitational pull of the ocean. Having “K” really helped when trying to figure out those last strokes.

One of the other things that made the golf event so much fun was that ShareASale had brought in Golf Outing TV (GOTV) to interview and capture the play of all the golfers so they could put together a video for the evening’s dinner entertainment. The guys from GOTV did a great job. They captured some of the day’s best moments (like my 25′ putt) and some of most hilarious blunders of the day, too. They made us all laugh and really helped kick off the weekend in style.

Playing Pelican Hill was just such a treat (thanks to the team at ShareASale!!) and I hope that one day I make it back out to sunny California to play Pelican Hill again or to try out some of the other Pacific Ocean front courses.