Travelrific® Travel Journal
Picture postcards in prose.™ Check out the blogroll on the front page for official merchandise and other resources!Archive for golf
600 Years in the Making
By Linda Tancs
Golf is a 600-year-old sport. Hard to believe that it’s taken that long to get a golf festival going where it all began. The St Andrews Golf Festival is the first-ever celebration of golf at its birthplace in St Andrews, Scotland. Today through 1 April, the free calendar of events includes the Seve exhibition at The Scores Hotel, an exclusive talk by Mungo Park (grandson of the first winner of the Open Championship in 1860), the Bobby Jones exhibition and golf correspondent Lewine Mair’s talk on the history of women’s golf.
Share this:
The PGA of Mini Golf
By Linda Tancs
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina is a family-friendly destination. After all, the nearby Children’s Museum of South Carolina has interactive exhibits and programs such as a science lab and a kiddie ATM. And what could be more family friendly than miniature golf. Myrtle Beach is known in many circles as the mini golf capital of the world. So it probably would come as no surprise that the area hosts a Masters National Pro Mini Golf Championship at Hawaiian Rumble, a course sporting a 40- foot lava rock volcano that erupts every 20 minutes or so for a few seconds. The event, held this year between 14 and 17 October, is the official national championship for top professional mini golfers in America. It is approximately five and a half miles from Myrtle Beach International Airport and similar distances from Broadway at the Beach and Barefoot Landing. Look for the Hawaiian Rumble sign at the intersection of Highway 17 and 33rd Avenue South.
Share this:
Pebble Beach of the East
By Linda Tancs
Sea Island is a resort along the southeast coast of Georgia sporting ocean-view villas, a football field-sized spa, and a seaside golf course. Sounds like the perfect spot for a golf tournament. The PGA folks think so, too; that’s why the resort’s course will host a new PGA Tour event called the McGladrey Classic. Gates open tomorrow through 10 October. Proceeds from the event benefit Special Olympics, the Boys and Girls Club of Southeast Georgia and Safe Harbor. Free parking is located at McKinnon Airport on St. Simons Island, where a shuttle to the course will be provided. Need a place to stay? The resort’s centerpiece, The Cloister Hotel, awaits you with five miles of private beach to keep you busy while the pros square off.
Share this:
Twenty Ten Hosts Ryder Cup
By Linda Tancs
Twenty Ten, located at the Celtic Manor Resort in Wales’s Usk Valley, is the first course ever built specifically for the Ryder Cup, golf’s crowning event taking place there from 1 to 3 October. The 71-par course presents water challenges on half of its holes to complement its many risk-and-reward dilemmas. Best leave that to the pros. For the rest of us, there’s a golf academy featuring a floodlit driving range, practice range, golf shop and teaching bays and two luxurious golf clubhouses to relax and unwind from it all. Located less than three hours from London, catch a direct train from Paddington.
Share this:
The Legends Meet at Greenbrier
By Linda Tancs
The Greenbrier, an award-winning resort located in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, bills itself as “America’s resort.” An apt description, considering this National Historic Landmark is almost as old as the country. Known as the “Queen of the Southern Spas,” the complex of 6500 acres in the Alleghenies is a mix of sulphur springs, luxury accommodations, formal gardens, and golf courses. It’s the golf that takes center stage now through 1 August as the PGA hosts its newest event, the Greenbrier Classic, at the famed Old White Course, designed in 1914 by Charles Blair Macdonald, the reputed father of American golf course architecture. The festivities include a concert tonight by country music star Reba McEntire, followed by a performance tomorrow by Rascal Flatts and Saturday’s song fest with Brad Paisley and Carrie Underwood. The legends truly do meet at Greenbrier.
Share this:
Golfers Will Find Paradise in the Balkans
By Linda Tancs
In Bulgaria, golf remains a little-known sport played predominately by foreign investors, diplomats and locals, if the scene at Ravno Pole is any indication. But it’s the foreign investment that may turn this land of almost 8 million inhabitants into a golf mecca. Already 19 properties are under development, set to compete with the ski and Black Sea resorts for an influx of tourism that reached the 5 million mark last year. If Black Sea Rama, a Gary Player signature course, is any indication, it’s the luxe traveler with 15.000 euros to spend on a membership who’s likely to find karma there. However, this government-supported venture promises to make golf an every man’s (or woman’s) game. Whatever the case, an uptick in Bulgaria’s tourism image seems assured.
If you enjoyed this post, please share it on sites such as StumbleUpon, vote for it, or bookmark it. Thanks for your support! Travelrific® was featured as Blog of the Day on NJ.com!
Share this:
Royal Golf
By Linda Tancs
St. Andrews, move over. Soon they’ll be another “royal” kid in town. Royal Island, Bahamas will host its own golf club courtesy of The Golden Bear (that’s Jack Nicklaus for you non-golfers out there) when construction is completed in 2009. Okay, maybe that’s not soon enough.
Travelrific® Travel Journal 