Ski, Bike, Raft and Play Golf at Keystone Resort

  The 18th hole on the River Course at Keystone Resort & Conference Center is pure Wild West: Ice-capped peaks of the Rockies loom in the distance, their bases kissing the frigid waters of Lake Dillon. Barren, north-facing hillsides sit to the left, opposite pine-dotted, sage-covered slopes to the right. Directly below stretches a sweeping […]

JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country Resort & Spa

  Dating to 1922 and boasting an impressive roster of homegrown winners Byron Nelson, Ben Hogan, Lee Trevino, Ben Crenshaw and Justin Leonard, the Valero Texas Open has a long, distinguished history. This year, the tournament will begin a new chapter when it moves to its new home, the JW Marriott San Antonio Hill Country […]

Boyne Mountain Resort, Michigan

  The Kircher family has never been afraid to dream big. The late Everett Kircher, founder of Boyne USA Resorts, brought skiing to Northern Michigan in 1947 and added golf two decades later, sparking a development boom that transformed this region into one of America’s premier outdoor playgrounds. At Boyne Mountain, the first of Boyne […]

Golf Travel: A Trip to Newport, Rhode Island

  No American city has a better golf pedigree than Newport. The first U.S. Open and Amateur were played at Newport Country Club, one of the five founding clubs of the U.S. Golf Association. But the town is better known for sailing—it hosted the America’s Cup from 1930 to 1983—and as the summer playground of […]

New York Golf Travel: The Otesaga Resort Hotel

  Mention Cooperstown and baseball invariably springs to mind. Home to the National Baseball Hall of Fame, this charming village in upstate New York is a sacred spot to purists of the game. At the opposite end of town are a grand hotel and golf course that you might not be so aware of. But […]

California Golf Travel: Ojai Valley Resort

  When architect Jay Morrish came to Southern California in 1988 to renovate the classic Ojai Valley Inn golf course, he was greeted with a perplexing situation: Two of the original holes had vanished. The solution to this mystery, Morrish quickly discovered, was that the holes had been bulldozed during WWII when the U.S. Army […]

California Golf Travel: Santa Barbara

  Drifting north on El Camino Real, the “King’s Highway” that links California’s 21 colonial missions, I can sense Junipero Serra’s presence in the red-tile roofs and whitewashed adobe walls all around us. My wife, for some reason, cannot. “Nobody can walk that far for that long and not collapse,” she insists. But Serra, a […]

Risk Reward Holes: Casino Golf Courses

  Barona Valley Ranch Resort and Casino Barona Creek Golf Club Lakeside, Calif. Best gambling hole: No. 14, par 4, 316 yards “A short tight fairway, with a mountainous natural reserve to the right. Most of the time it’s downwind, so it’s appealing. I’ve taken everything from a 2 to a 9. That’s what makes […]

California Golf Travel: Palm Springs

  I just had to see Frank’s house before leaving Palm Springs. The map said it was close to O’Donnell’s nine-holer, the first course ever built in the desert, back in 1925.  Armed with a self-guided star map and a handful of Rat Pack CDs, I was plotting the perfect conclusion to my retro golf […]

Fairmont Grand Del Mar Golf Resort

  With its shops, restaurants and galleries, the tony oceanfront burg of Del Mar, just north of Torrey Pines, more resembles a European village than a California town. So the Fairmont Grand Del Mar, a cozy 249-room Mediterranean-style resort, is of a piece with its setting. The resort was inspired by the work of early […]