Huge 1 Million Mile Giveaway, Shawn's Hong Kong Dilemma & IHG's Best Kept Status Secret!

**Shawn Coomer** (0:00)
How should I get to Asia? Why IHG's Diamond status is underrated? How to win a million Atmos miles? And much more coming up right now on MTM Travel.

**Mark Ostermann** (0:11)
You didn't tease it good. You should have said, why this loyalty program is underrated.

**Shawn Coomer** (0:17)
I got through the whole thing in one take. I got through it in one take and it's not good enough.
So happy Monday, everyone. I hope you had a wonderful weekend. How's life treating? It's finally below 100 degrees today in Las Vegas, Mark.

**Mark Ostermann** (0:36)
Yeah, we had the weekend. It looked like it was going to be a perfect weekend, like high 70s, low 80s. Saturday was great. The weather was really good. Out on the lake all day. And then Sunday, I was supposed to golf for the first time, like three years. And I wake up to my buddy texting me, he's like, so what are we doing? And I'm like, what do you mean what we're doing? He's like, it's pouring. It's going to rain all day. And then it rained all day. So Sunday was kind of ruined even though it was supposed to be like 75 and overcast, but no rain up to like Friday, I think that's the last time I looked at it. So it's kind of sad. I was a little bit excited to get out there and golf, but I probably need to hit the range a few times before because it's been so long.
So maybe it worked out better. I didn't embarrass myself for four hours.

**Shawn Coomer** (1:17)
Man, golf, I just have never been able to get into golf. It's so frustrating for me.
You know, and obviously you got to practice a lot to get even decent. And then I always feel like I'm holding everybody up, I suck so bad. I do like going out to the range though and hitting the balls, but I can never get consistent. I'm like a half the time I hit a ground ball. It just gets to the point where I'm so frustrated by the end that...

**Mark Ostermann** (1:38)
Golfers call it a worm burner. That's what it's called, Shawn.

**Shawn Coomer** (1:41)
Well, I'm the worst golfer ever. I will just say, like, I will raise my hand and say it, you know, but it's fun once in a while. You just got to go with the right people who are... Because there's some guys who take it so seriously and they're so...
I don't know. I do enjoy getting out on the course, relaxing a little bit, hitting the ball. Even if I... Yeah. What is the thing, like, where you get to drop your ball or everybody else hits? That's what I need. So that, because I usually hit... Oh, the scramble?

**Mark Ostermann** (2:07)
Yeah.

**Shawn Coomer** (2:08)
Yeah, where you just... Best ball, right? That's what they call it. Best ball, yeah, yeah, scramble. Yeah. That's me.

**Mark Ostermann** (2:12)
You could be the putter. You could be the first putter to get the lie.

**Shawn Coomer** (2:15)
I'm not a bad putter. I'm not a bad putter. You know, all that mini golf as a kid.

**Mark Ostermann** (2:19)
Yeah. Yeah, usually you have, like, the person that's the worst, like, go first, because if they hit anything decent, like, all right, we got a safety shot out there. Or do the first putt, because then you can read the line a little bit after that. So that's perfect. Like, scramble is good. But the funny thing is, like, the top golfs of the world are actually better for people that hit ground balls, because it just scoots right into one of those things. Like, my brother-in-law is a terrible golfer, but he always scores better because he just hits it straight out there and it rolls into one of the nets where I'm trying to hit it, like, in the air into a zone, and his skips into the center zone. I'm like, well, this is crap. This isn't golf.

**Shawn Coomer** (2:54)
The one thing about golf, welcome to the Golf Podcast, is just how exhausting it is. I think most people don't understand, like, if you've never played golf, how, at the end of 18 holes, how tired you are. And you're like, what did I do that I'm so tired? You know, sometimes it's the heat or whatever, but in your golf cart, I'm not talking about walking the course. And it's just, it really is tiring. So you are doing a lot of physical activity, which is good.

**Mark Ostermann** (3:17)
Yeah. I mean, if you are semi-retired or retired and you want to get in shape, walking a golf course during the week is a great way to do it. And I used to walk in high school when I was on the golf team, like you had to walk all the stuff, you weren't allowed carts. And now it would be like, there's no way I would go out there and walk a course. Like, no, no, thank you. But we would finish in about the same amount of time because we were all pretty good golfers and you just hoofed it real quick through and it wasn't that much different than a cart. Everybody walked to their ball and kind of moved on versus driving from one to the next.