Skip navigation
Favorites
Sign up to follow your favorites on all your devices.
Sign up
TA

Travel

Articles

Every sports fan wants to know what it’s like to dunk a basketball, hit a 95-mph fastball or sink that 4-foot par putt on No. 18 for the victory and first-place check. Well, the Golf Channel Am Tour is giving swingers of every stripe an opportunity to go 1-for-3. The Am Tour, which features 11 tournaments in the Tucson area, culminating with the Tucson Tour Championship in mid-August, is the closest thing amateurs will get to knowing what touring pros feel like on a week-to-week basis.
For the past two decades, golf has been a driving force in an effort to re-brand Lanai, which was once known as ‘Pineapple Island,’ as a private paradise for sun-seeking tourists. The smallest and least-populated of Hawaii’s half dozen tourist-friendly islands, Lanai boasts 36 holes of championship golf -- the Challenge at Manele and the Experience at Koele -- and only 30 miles of paved road.
Falconhead Golf Club is a rare public course in an area of Austin that is littered with private clubs. Along with a tour-quality course design, Falconhead is consistently one of the better-conditioned golf courses in the Hill Country. Falconhead has many trimmings of a resort course and might become one soon.
Indian Springs Golf Club in Indio, Calif. was once counted among the Coachella Valley’s golf also-rans. But more than a million yards of dirt were moved to craft the grounds of today, and the result is a highly playable course that serves as a nice, little gem on the east end of the Valley. It truly is a course that will prove very playable for all levels.
The Arnold Palmer-designed Classic Club was built to be an annual host to the former Bob Hope Classic, but only did so for three years as it was given a windy reputation by PGA Tour pros. But the Classic Club refuses to sulk on what may have been. Rather, the facility presents one of the Coachella Valley’s most all-encompassing golf and dining experiences, Judd Spicer writes.
SunRidge Canyon Golf Club opened back in 1995, but in the spring of 2012, it feels like the Scottsdale golf scene’s shiny new kid again. New ownership, a fresh commitment and some star power are helping to put this golf course back into the mix in terms of the Valley of the Sun’s top must-play courses. Any truly great hangout needs a golf course that locals and snowbirds alike will want to play again and again.
Located just north of Naples, Old Corkscrew Golf Club in Estero, Florida is a tough, Jack Nicklaus design that isn’t for the faint of heart. Our best advice? Enjoy Old Corkscrew for what it is -- a cart ride on the wild side.
There’s golf and then there’s tournament golf, and Walters Golf in Las Vegas has some intriguing events coming up for every kind of player and mood. The Walters Golf Signature Tournaments start this Memorial Day weekend with a two-day ParAm event, continues on Father’s Day with a two-person tourney and concludes with a British Open celebration event at Royal Links Golf Club.
Canoa Ranch Golf Club, a rugged walk in the southern Arizona aridness, is a difficult, 6,701-yard par 71 designed by Lee Schmidt and Brian Curley that traverses downhill through arroyo-cut terrain. A difficult golf course with great views, Canoa Ranch provides elevation changes and fast greens.
Puerto Rico’s Bahia Beach Golf Club and St. Regis Resort, set on 483 acres, let nature do the talking. Designed by Robert Trent Jones Jr., the golf course is a Certified Gold Audubon International Signature Sanctuary, the only such course in Puerto Rico to receive the designation.
When it comes to championship venues, the San Francisco Bay area has it over southern California with more tournaments on more golf courses, more history, more memories and even more opportunities for avid golfers to sample.
Think one word when you visit the Pete Dye Resort Course at Westin Mission Hills: skinny. The Rancho Mirage, California course charts just 6,700 yards from the tips, and the par-70 scorecard presents a mesh of Dye signatures and dart board shot-making requirements. Despite the lack of length and just two par 5s, the course can indeed prove a challenge to the inaccurate. A selection of water hazards, lengthy dune bunkering and tee shots into the prevailing wind await.
They call it the Southern Heart of the Old West, and when you come to play Rio Rico C.C. and spend a few days at the Esplendor Resort at Rio Rico, your mind might just drift to a day when conquistadors traveled here along with bygone legends such as Geronimo, Pancho Villa and Billy the Kid. Located 45 minutes south of Tucson and 15 miles from Nogales, Mexico, Rio Rico is peaceful and quiet with gently rolling fairways, strategic bunkers and large, subtle greens that were challenging enough to host second state PGA Tour Qualifying four years in a row.
National Golf Management, a recent merger of Burroughs and Chapin Golf Management and the Myrtle Beach National Company, now controls 23 of the 90 golf courses along the Grand Strand, a 60-mile coastal region from North Carolina to Pawleys Island, S.C. NGM, however, could have an impact beyond the Grand Strand, Jason Scott Deegan writes.
It’s been several years since Kauai has been able to show off its golf scene in its entirety. But with the reopening of the Prince Course, the island is finally ready to bring it’s A-Game.
If it’s March in Arizona, getting into the swing of things has two meanings: Baseball and golf. It’s the perfect double-header for a sports fan. Play a round of golf at any of the Valley’s great courses in the morning, and then hit a Cactus League game in the afternoon. The best part: There are so many terrific golf clubs in the Valley of the Sun that golfers can play just about anywhere and have no more than a 30-minute drive to the nearest Cactus League ballpark.
Corporate business plays a big part in Scottsdale’s tourism industry. The Scottsdale Convention & Visitors Bureau reports that 60 percent of all resort and full-service hotel business results from meetings-related travel. It’s not hard to understand why: There’s great golf, trendy resorts, major sports venues and cool surprises that live and thrive under the Arizona sun. Here’s a handful of reasons why you should consider Scottsdale for your next convention or corporate retreat.
There’s no question who Puerto Rico’s biggest golf star is. Now 76, Chi Chi Rodriguez still influences young golfers on the island and attracts fans at the Puerto Rico Open. We caught up with Chi Chi at Trump International Golf Club.
The TPC Scottsdale gets recognized on par with other top TPC facilities across the country for its Stadium Course, home to the Phoenix Waste Management Open. But it’s the 7,115-yard Champions Course that just might be right for your foursome. The Champions will always play second fiddle to the Stadium in stature, but here’s why this layout might be a better choice: price, playability and walkability.
Golfers love to eat, and there are few places that combine the two experiences better than the Big Island of Hawaii. Throw in some Kona coffee, something you don’t want to miss on any trip to the Big Island, and you have struck it rich -- literally. Mike Bailey offers up some of the best places to eat and get a good cup of coffee on the Big Island.
Any self-respecting golfer will take one look at the scorecard for Rancho Manana Golf Club and dismiss it immediately. But the numbers are a flat-out lie. Simply put, Rancho Manana is the toughest 6,000 yards you’ll ever encounter. It’s is one of the funkier and more enjoyable tracks in the Scottsdale area, because it’s so different: The scenery is beautiful, the price is right, the bunkers don’t require a step-ladder to get out of and the atmosphere is low-key.
The PGA Tour’s Humana Challenge may have moved on from SilverRock Resort in La Quinta, but the golf course still thrives. If you are placing tee into turf, remember SilverRock offers one of the area’s most inspired and demanding canvasses of golf. And at nearly 7,600 yards from the tips, it’s also one of the longest in southern California. With added course knowledge, the track will play far more favorably, and the brilliant surrounds will prove all the more rewarding.
Golf in Perthsire is highlighted by three-course Gleneagles Resort, but the mountainous and scenic county of Perthshire is home to many golf clubs worth discovering within a mashie of St. Andrews.
Much focus will be paid to the infamous stretch of holes named the ‘Bear Trap’ at PGA National’s Champion Course. But the resort offers so much more, beginning with four other golf courses.