During the fall and winter months, a handful of warm-weather destinations attract avid golfers, retirees and professional golf tours.
It’s easy to confuse the Pinehurst area with Pinehurst Resort. After all, Pinehurst Resort is home to one of the world’s most famous courses (No. 2) and hosts numerous USGA championships (including the U.S. Open).
When Jack Nicklaus’ Tradition Course opened at Reunion Resort in late 2006, it joined two other championship courses designed by living legends. Arnold Palmer’s Legacy Course and Tom Watson’s Independence Course_Ê were already on site and had received critical acclaim, not to mention the honor of hosting the annual Ginn Open, one of only a handful of LPGA tournaments televised on network TV.
Don’t worry Augusta isn’t the Southeast’s only exclusive layout. If you crave manicured fairways and first-class facilities (that are open to the public), then tee it up on one of these top-notch Southeast resorts. After all they’re just a short drive from Augusta National and a heck of a lot easier to get on._Ê
St. James’ legacy lives on in many forms. Numerous churches, hospitals and even a Broadway theater have been named after the patron saint of equestrians (among other things). There aren’t any horses at St. James Plantation in Southport, N.C., but there’s plenty of wide-open space, a nature trail and Waterway Park contained within the private community’s 5,000 acres.
A number of destinations around the world feature golf as the main attraction, and the Brunswick Isles, an area straddling the border of North and South Carolina, is definitely one of them. There are 16 golf courses from Calabash up north to North Myrtle Beach down south. Along the way, golfers can tee it up on courses designed by Arnold Palmer, Rees Jones and Myrtle Beach regular, Dan Maples, to name a few, and find themselves negotiating marshland, rivers and creeks, as many courses take advantage of the area’s natural hazards.
2007 is a special year for Pinehurst Resort: The new Pinehurst Golf Academy recently opened its doors to students, and Nos. 2 and 4 will be in tournament shape as they prepare for the 2008 U.S. Amateur. But the big news is that_Ê Pinehurst’s most famous course, Donald Ross’ legendary No. 2, turns 100 years old.
With more than 16,000 golf courses in the United States, you’d think there would be plenty of opportunities for golfers to find their own slice of heaven–a quiet, unpopulated course where they can roam freely without feeling crowded by other golfers. But that’s not the case. Even though 3,206 courses have been added to the U.S. golf course database since 1990, it’s still really hard to find 18 holes that you can call your own. Wouldn’t it be great to know that you could just walk on a course whenever you wanted and have the place all to yourself?
Things aren’t always the way they seem. Remember M. Night Shyamalan’s movie, The Sixth Sense, with its edge-of-your-seat surprise ending? (If you haven’t seen it, Bruce Willis reveals in the last minute that he wears a toupee.) Just kidding.
“We Built This City On Rock And Ross.” Donald Ross’s imprint on golf-course design has been everlasting. Ross’s love affair with Pinehurst began with his work on the famed No. 2 course at the Pinehurst Resort–a course most experts agree is not only the finest of Ross’s designs, but also among the best ever designed in America.
