by Liz Comte Reisman

There is something supernatural about the desert. It hits you when you see the flat, arid landscape pressed up against the Disney-like giant rock formations. Then again at night when the air turns crisp and cool and the stars appear larger and brighter than anywhere else.

golf in the desert is equally surreal. There is an abundance of it in the Phoenix/Scottsdale area. I chose The Boulders in Carefree to the north, where the 12-million-year-old rock formations make for intimidating fairway markers.

When driving off one of the many elevated tee boxes, a ball well hit appears to soar and soar, past Black Mountain and the range beyond. Get caught in the rough, however, and reality strikes. Once your ball disappears into the spine of a prickly pear cactus, or one of its relatives, forget it. Despite The Boulders’ desert location, there is plenty of water to be avoided on its two Jay Morrish-designed courses, particularly on the North’s unforgiving 175-yard par-3 14th hole.

An afternoon tee time offers the added bonus of watching a spectacular desert sunset (as well as a leisurely morning at the world-renowned Sonoran Spa). Don’t be surprised if a four-legged creature joins your group in the early evening. Roaming coyotes have been known to pick up a stray ball or two while crossing The Boulders’ fairways.

by Geoff Russell

The La Quinta Resort & Club turned 70 this year and, as you might expect, there is little similarity now to the way this little Mexican-style retreat catered to its Hollywood clientele back in the Roaring ’20s.

You can no longer drive down from L.A. Friday night on a $1.50 tankful of gas, expect to make it around one of its courses Saturday morning on a $1 green fee and a 30-cent sleeve of balls, or enjoy the chef’s special at one of its three restaurants that evening for five bucks plus tip. You don’t run into Clark Gable’s backswing in the hallways or find Bette Davis in the hot tub outside your casita anymore, either.

But one thing hasn’t changed here since 1926: the weather. It’s still perfect, and it’s still free. And when you’re shivering out a December snowstorm contemplating a quick golf getaway, the last thing you want to be consulting as you make plans is The Weather Channel.

The golf at La Quinta is spectacular. Credit goes to Pete Dye. Guests at the resort have access to four courses, three of them-the Mountain and Dunes Courses at La Quinta itself, and the TPC Stadium at nearby PGA West-were designed by the enigmatic Dye.

I have experienced each of the Pete Dye Periods a golfer can endure: I craved his courses. I criticized them. I cringed at them. Now I coexist with them, quite happily. Dye’s layouts are interesting, challenging and usually in superb condition. In La Quinta’s case they also happen to be three-fourths of the best collection of courses anywhere in Palm Springs.

The TPC Stadium is more of a curiosity than a great layout-the 19-foot-deep bunkers, the hole named Alcatraz, the 142 Slope rating-from the blue tees. It may not be the toughest course in the world, but it is the course that was too tough for the PGA Tour pros, which means the rest of us have to play it once, just to say we finished.

The Mountain Course is a legitimately great layout, a scrub-brushed, desert-canyon-mountain excursion that spawned so many copycat “Big-horns,” “Quarries” and “Rancho La Quintas” in recent years.

The Mountain’s front nine is shoved up against a particularly stunning member of the Santa Rosas, the rocky mountain range that borders the hotel. The back nine winds its way up into those mountains, culminating in the downhill par-3 16th, probably the most dramatic one-shotter Dye ever built without relying on an island green.

The Dunes and La Quinta’s fourth layout, the Jack Nicklaus course at PGA West, although not as stunning as the Mountain or as strenuous as the Stadium, are solid tests-the perfect setup for enjoying the rest of what La Quinta is about.

The attractive casitas at the resort are more like guest cottages than hotel rooms, and each group of eight really has its own hot tub. The eggs Benedict at the Sunday champagne brunch at Montañas is the best reason to push back your morning starting time. And the margarita they make at the Adobe Grill is the best reason to skip the emergency nine.

by Tom Callahan

In the pineapple days, before cheaper labor was discovered in Asia, Lanai was Hawaii’s pineapple island. The only golf course was Cavendish, a gift from the Dole company to its workers, who swarmed the free property in rollicking 16-somes and 20-somes that required a wartime level of readiness. At Caven-dish, golfers were well advised to keep their heads both up and down.

When the pineapple people left, and the great fields turned to alfalfa and oats, Lanai became the closest thing Hawaii had to a deserted island, and it still is. You can drive for an hour there and come across no one. You can find your own beach and feel like planting a flag. Then, when sundown turns everything cherry red, you can return to Koele or Manele Bay, new settlements that have joined with Cavendish to make Lanai a three-course island.

The Lodge at Koele is a step into the 1940s, a cedar chest of graceful details. In the morning, barefoot couples in terry-cloth robes take putters (instead of croquet mallets?) out to a rolling green miniature course that is as delicately clipped as a bonsai tree. In the afternoon, some of them play The Experience at Koele, Greg Norman’s first whack at drawing on the sky.

The front nine, the mountain nine, is a walk in the clouds. From the sixth tee, a Normanesque par 5, Maui and Molokai can be seen flashing semaphore signals in the reflective mirror of the sea. The eighth hole drops 200 feet to a valley of brooks and birdies. All of a sudden, it’s summertime again.

Not far away, hard against the ocean, Jack Nicklaus has built The Challenge at Manele. Although the inferences in the titles “Experience” and “Challenge” are very much intended, Manele isn’t exactly heavy lifting. A few water hazards ave to be negotiated, but the biggest problem is the distracting beauty. Porpoises are moon-walking just offshore, splashing about for attention.

This is the softest island in the archipelago, the one without neon or hamburgers, grass skirts or ukeleles. Also be warned: It’s a lousy place to get a tattoo.

by Jim Moriarty

Cabo San Lucas is the wide-open tourist town where you can actually pay to have a wandering caballero put a shiny steel hard hat on your head, pound it with sticks like the drummer in MegaDeath, pour a generous shot of tequila down your throat and, grabbing your head in both hands, shake it like a vine-ripened casaba melon.

Holy Pat Buchanan, here’s another high-wage, high-tech job exported to Mexico!

For decades, the twin villages of Cabo San Lucas and the quieter San José del Cabo, at the very southern tip of Baja California, Mexico, have served as a winter refuge for a population of living organisms as diverse as the migrating whales and lecherous Hollywood executives, both of whom, according to local legend, travel great distances to spawn.

The intimate beach hotels of post-NAFTA Cabo, however, have grown into golf-course developments and full-blown resorts. The little stretch of highway between the two towns contains, unquestionably, the best cluster of golf courses in all of Mexico.

Palmilla Golf Club, set in the desert hills and cactus canyons above the coastline, is an entertaining and eminently playable Jack Nicklaus lay-out owned by the Palmilla Hotel, one of the magnificent traditional inns on the peninsula.

Palmilla’s sibling is Cabo del Sol, a resort and real-estate venture just down the road. With several holes right along the rocky coastline, Cabo del Sol ranks as one of the most striking courses built in the last two decades.

Those two would, in and of themselves, provide any golfer with all the diversion required, but there is another high-quality alternative, Cabo Real, done largely by Robert Trent Jones Jr, not to mention Cabo San Lucas, just down the road.

Los Cabos has been referred to as Scottsdale by the Sea, a phrase that sufficiently covers the “look” of the place. You’ll need that hard hat, though, to get the “feel.”

by Larry Dorman

When you say, “Florida golf,” it generally conjurs images of Blue Monsters, Bear Traps or the 17th at TPC at Sawgrass, and of the frenetic pace of the East Coast I-95 corridor, from Jacksonville to Miami. Pity.

While many fine courses are on Florida’s east coast, the Gulf side of the peninsula is where the pace is slower, the rates lower and the courses every bit as good, in some cases better.

Three conspicuous examples spring to mind: World Woods, Innisbrook and Saddlebrook. Each offers something different while sharing a high-1quality golf experience-all of it in the same area.

Tucked away in the most remote spot is World Woods, an absolute, solid-golf gem. Slaves to convenience should shed the shackles and rough it a little to get here. The 36-hole complex is some 80 miles from the Tampa/St. Petersburg airport, in the tiny town of Brooksville. The nearest hotel is 14 miles away. The golf, though, is worlds apart.

Tom Fazio has created, in the Pine Barrens Course at World Woods, the southern equivalent of Pine Valley. Northeastern golf snobs must see it to believe it. Once they do, they will. You can lose yourself beating balls in the huge practice facility, among the finest in the Southeast and nearly the equal of the TPC at Sawgrass.

Rolling Oaks, the other 18-hole course at the World Woods complex, utilizes the terrain in the usual Tom Fazio fashion, and is a pleasure, too.

The Innisbrook Hilton Resort at Tarpon Springs, home to the annual mixed-team JCPenney Classic, is a fine golf refuge. Its spacious rooms have a homey feel. The 63 holes of golf are uniformly good. Some debate exists whether the Copperhead Course (7,087 yards, par 71) deserves to be rated higher than its sister, the Island Course. This is like arguing that pecan pie is superior to Key lime. Essentially, it’s a tasty tossup. You can’t lose.

The same goes for whether Saddlebrook, over in Wesley Chapel, is as good as Innisbrook. Again, what’s your pleasure? There are 36 holes here, and the two courses are very different. The Saddlebrook Course, designed by Dean Refram, can be penal, but so can stone crabs if you don’t know how to crack them properly. Saddlebrook’s Palmer Course, done in 1979 by Arnold Palmer and his design partner Ed Seay, is forgiving but still engaging.

West-coast golf in Florida is like that. Cross the state and frenzy is replaced by friendly, not a bad tradeoff at all.