So they land in Augusta, Ga and head to the home of The Masters, Augusta National.    A round of 18 holes on the famed track that looks so great on TV in April.  Dinner at the Augusta National Golf Club, then they get to stay in one of the cottages on the property.  If it ended right there and they returned home the next morning,  it would be awesome! But it wasn’t over yet.

The next day they play the main course again in the morning and then play the Par 3 course before heading home in the Nicklaus jet.  And the topper is that Jack, as the member at Augusta National, picks up the tab for the trip.  Does it get any better than that?

Wow, a golf trip of a lifetime.  Not much more I can say.

First, since it is not Spring Break, it’s not a bad idea to try some golf around the Panama City area. The Bay Point Marriott Resort is excellent and has some good golf. There are also some nice golf courses to the west around the Destin area as well.
Orlando is also a great golf destination. There is some reasonable golf there. A couple of nice courses include the Mystic Dunes Golf Club and Orange County National Panther Lake. Overall recommendation is to avoid the Disney area for lodging to keep things affordable and spend the money on your golf swing, not the hotel rooms.
South Florida is warm and enjoyable in the winter months. The closer you are to Miami and West Palm, golf will definitely be expensive. I like Doral in Miami if you have the cash to afford it. If you are looking for a little more affordable, try Port St. Lucie which is less than an hour north of West Palm Beach. Try the PGA Golf Club, Dye for some great golf.
All in all, if you are thinking of heading south this winter, there is plenty of great golf at affordable prices throughout all of Florida. By the way, The Golf Nut is not from Florida or compensated in any way for this. I just love going there to golf and hope that you will too.

I have played five of the golf courses on the Robert Trent Golf Trail and enjoyed them all. I mentioned them in one of my earlier posts about great golf locations. Things can change, but when I played them, the courses were maintained to top standards. They were, in some cases, “country club” nice. And they were all reasonable in price.
I just read about one that opened last August and it is 8,191 yards from the tips. Yes, it’s still a par 72! But it appears from what I saw to still be very playable with a slope rating of 135. The longest Par 5 is 698 yards. There is something about the ego that makes you want to tackle that thing.
The course is Ross Bridge, near Birmingham. It looks like the prices are starting to rise, because this golf course is the most expensive of all the courses on the Trail. But if you are planning a golf trip or a golf vacation, and live in the Southeast, the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail is a great golf experience. And Ross Bridge would probably be worth the price of admission just to say you had played an 8,000 yard course. And go for it; play the course from the tips and don’t worry about your golf score. You can forget turning this one in for your handicap.
You can find the course on the Trail’s web site at www.rtjgolf.com

In the December 2005 issue, Golf Digest had a blurb about a golf course where you can play for free. Truly, golf for free if you can remove it! Check this out.
In Sharon, PA the Buhl Farm Golf Course is open from April to Nov 15. It closes from November to April for the winter. Except for a $1 pullcart fee, you can play for free. It appears to be a 9 hole golf course, par 34 with a distance of 2,378 yards. They get 30,000 rounds a year.
Boy I wish more golf courses went this route. Has golf here in the U.S. gotten so commercialized that green fees will continue to skyrocket and clubs will get more and more exclusive? Will it become almost impossible to get in to see the top pros play in the Major Golf Tournaments. I like the approach that the British take with the Open Championship. Instead of having to find and pay for high priced tickets like our major championships, anyone can walk up to the gate and pay the fee to enter and watch the golf tournament. That is the way it ought to be in my opinion.
Maybe with the popularity of golf and the money that the PGA and professional golf as a whole is raking it, they should put some back into the sport and look at improving the availability of golf for all golfers regardless of social or economic status. Just food for thought.

Now, as nuts as I am about golf, that is still a tough question. Which of my many favorite golf locales do I recommend for you guys? Well I will try to keep this to a few short paragraphs (impossible for me normally).
Since I can’t pick just one, let me give you a couple of great options. And these are golf locations that are not your typical well-known like Pinehurst or Pebble Beach, you already know about those. These are great golf locations/resorts that I think that you will thoroughly enjoy and won’t have to hock your golf clubs to pay for the trip.
One great golfing location (it probably doesn’t qualify as a resort) is the Chateu Elan Winery and Hotel north of Atlanta, GA. Late spring in Georgia is usually gorgeous golf weather and this hotel has a great 18 that is made up of famous golf holes from around the world. Customer service is awesome and the golf facilities and golf courses are immaculate.
My second recommendation is the Arizona Biltmore. A great resort (what would you expect from a Biltmore) in a great golf location. It’s a little on the pricey side, but well worth it. And it’s located in Phoenix, AZ which gives you access to a virtual smorgasboard of great golf resorts and golf courses. You can play several while you are there and, I don’t believe that you will tire of any of them.
Have a great golfing trip, get your golf clubs ready, and hit ‘em long and straight!

Golf schools can be a great experience. Hitting hundreds of golf balls every morning until I have blisters on every finger, playing golf until I can’t see anything at all in the twilight…..wow sounds great doesn’t it? Actually for us golf nuts, it really is. It can be an awesome golf experience, but what are you trying to do?
For a golfer with your handicap, I wouldn’t recommend what I call a basic, complete golf game school. There are some good ones out there. John Jacobs has an excellent 5 day school that will really help a golfer who is more of a beginner. This is a great school for someone wanting to build their swing from the ground up. The exception to this would be if you are looking for 5 days of golf practice and significant playing time at a golf school in a specific location. If you have the time and money, I would definitely recommend the Jacobs schools, they do everything first class.
A great value and very personalized instruction can be found at Golf Made Simple with Marc Solomon. They are mostly 3 day schools, but usually are limited to 4 golfers at very reasonable rates. They have West Coast and East Coast schools and are very good for golfers at your handicap level.
Now for specialty golf training. My favorite is The Dave Pelz short game school. This is an excellent program and you will typically see great results. They normally offer 3 day and 1 day sessions and many times rotate them around the country. This focus on the short golf can help lower your golf scores pretty quickly.
As I said earlier, a golf school trip can be a great experience, but I recommend that you know what you want out of it. Intense golf swing instruction? Lots of practice on your full golf swing? Want to play as many rounds as possible? It all depends on what you can spend and what you want out of it. I also recommend that you visit the-golfer.biz for great recommendations and resources.

Unbelievable as it sounds, it can cost that much to play the Old Course at St. Andrews in Scotland. This is a golf course that many golfers dream of getting a chance to play, even if just one time. I read recently that the reason for the high price is that a fair number of the rounds each year for the “home of golf” have been purchased in advance by tour companies and bundled in packages. Hence this extremely high price (and they call me nuts!)
But don’t despair, there is another way. In fact there are a couple of ways. I saw in a recent article that about half of the rounds of golf each year at the Old Course are sold in a lottery. To be considered for one of these rounds, you simply sign up the day before you want to play. And you must do this by 2pm either in person or over the phone. Now as high risk as this sounds, a lot of golf groups get on this way, it might take a day or two, but there are plenty of golf courses in the area to play while you wait.
You also have the option of showing up as a single and putting your name on a list to be matched up with a twosome or threesome. If you are planning a golf trip to Scotland anyway and are going to stay for more than a couple of days, either of these choices can be a good option.
If you need a more confirmed approach, you can also have good luck by booking in advance for the following year. Yes, I know that is a pain, but if you are planning on going and can plan in advance and be flexible on dates, you have a very good chance of getting a tee time for a memorable golf experience.
Now here’s the payoff. Using either of these methods can get you a tee time for a little over $200 instead of the unbelievable $1,800 price. So you can play the golf course know round the world as the “Old Course” and you don’t have to mortgage the house to do it.

Two great golf locations immediately come to mind. Your preference, if you are in the US, may come from whether you are on the West Coast or East Coast.
On the East Coast, you can create a great golf trip for a very reasonable cost playing the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama. This is a collection of 21 fabulous public courses that were finished in 1992 as the brainchild of Dr. David Bonner, CEO of the Retirement Systems of Alabama. He was looking for a way to diversify the funds of the state pension fund and bring more tourists to Alabama.
The results have created “…some of the best public golf on Earth.” according to the New York Times. All these golf courses were designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr, arguably one of the premier course architects in the world. Each of the courses are championship, resort caliber layouts at public course prices.
Going toward the West Coast, Cabo San Lucas in Mexico also offers great golf. It’s more expensive than Alabama, but if you have a little more to spend it’s still much cheaper than a trip to Europe.
There isn’t a Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail, but there are some great golf courses. Tracks like Cabo del Sol,a Tom Weiskopf design and Cabo Real Golf Club are just two examples of courses that are awesome to play. And from almost every golf course the view is so unbelievable, you might forget and leave your golf clubs on the course. Check out http://www.loscabosguide.com/golf/golf01.htm for additional information.
The Cabo area has more of a night life so if you are looking for a trip with a little more than golf, I’d check it out.