With all of the things going on right now, it appears that I have missed the birthday—blogiversary, if you will—of GolfBlogger.Com. The first GolfBlogger post appeared on March 22, 2004.

It has been a very busy year, both personally and professionally. The blogging highlight is that I published three books: two on golf, and one a history of Halloween horrors.

I also had the opportunity this past year to attend the USGA’s Senior Open as a member of the media, and the LPGA’s Jamie Farr event in Toledo. Both were incredible experiences that I treasure. Another highlight: I finally managed to meet my friend-in-golf-blogging, Tony Korologos, of Hooked on Golf Blog. Tony was on a junket to Michigan and I met him at the Black Lake course in Onaway. He was, as I expected, a real gentleman and beat me soundly in our match.

Finally, I managed to get to Myrtle Beach for the first time to play several courses, notably Greg Norman’s track at Barefoot Landing.

In the past year, I’ve published 1,127 posts, bringing the grand total to 8,875 and somewhere around 8 million words.  In doing so, I continue to avoid the fate of thousands of others who have started a golf blog—that of writing a few pieces and then losing interest; the internet is littered with the corpses of abandoned blogs. And yet, through it all, GolfBlogger remains a part-time effort. I teach high school as my day job, and although the end of my teaching career is in sight, I cannot yet turn GolfBlogger into a full time job (although that surely is the goal).

During the life of the blog, I’ve also published some 5,000 twitter posts and this year was recognized by the social metric firm Kred as being in the top 5% of internet influencers.

Most of the success of GolfBlogger is, I think, due to sheer stubbornness on my part. I write every day, nearly without fail (there is the occasional weekend lapse). GolfBlogger is, to my knowledge, the second oldest golf blog (the other is less than two months older), and perhaps the oldest continuously publishing. When I started, there really were no models to follow. I did not want to turn it into a site that simply reprinted news on the PGA Tour (and I’m glad I didn’t, for there are far too many of those now). Instead, my models were Instapundit, Gizmodo and BoingBoing. Like Instapundit, I decided to offer short, pithy comments and links to (golf) news; as with Gizmodo, I planned to link to new (golf) products and review them; and following BoingBoing’s lead, I would simply write about and link to (golf related) things that interest me or that I found cool. Finally, as with any blog, I would offer observations on life—in this case, my golfing life.

I’ve kept the blog going because I love to write. Before I changed careers to become a teacher, I was a professional editor and ghostwriter. I also love golf, so the match was a natural. In fact, I find that writing for GolfBlogger has become a compulsion.

I’d like to take this opportunity to thank the many, many thousands who make a habit of visiting the site, and the sponsors who make it financially possible for me to keep it all going.

The internet-influence metric site Kred has ranked GolfBlogger.Com in the Top 5% of Influencers.

Not bad for a one-man, part-time band.

I really don’t know what to make of this, or how they derive their information, but this site has rankings of the top golf blogs.

The little icon with the people is the sites traffic figures. I don’t give out my traffic figures to anyone, but I won’t say that this one is too far off base.

Nice to know that this little one-man, part-time band called GolfBlogger has done so well.

The folk at GolfSense have posted an interview with your friendly neighborhood GolfBlogger on their blog.

Winter appears to be over here in Michigan (knock on wood), so I’ve changed the masthead image from a wintry course to spring. I took the photo above yesterday, in sixty degree weather at Green Oaks golf course, in Ypsilanti, Michigan. It’s been Photoshopped with a blackline filter. It’s a pretty good representation of what the courses look like here right now.

GolfBlogger got a link in the esteemed community weblog, MetaFilter. That link that says “recreate the famous sandwiches” leads to this article on GolfBlogger, here.

Thanks, guys.