Travel Insider: From Mexico to Georgia to Oregon

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Loreto Bay

Aug. 22, 2011
By LINKS Magazine staff

Each week, LINKS Magazine will provide travel news and notes. For more information from LINKS Magazine, please visit the official website.

TRAVEL INSIDER:

Diving for Birdies: If you like your golf wet and wild, tee it up at Loreto Baja -- one of the New York Times' top 10 places to visit in 2011?about 300 miles up the coast from Cabo San Lucas on Mexico's Sea of Cortez. The Inn at Loreto Bay has an incredible deal?three days, two nights for $299 per couple with meals, transportation, and unlimited golf at Loreto Baja Golf Club, designed by David Duval (good until October 31). The area is also famous for water sports, notably snorkeling, kayaking, scuba, and deep-sea fishing.

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Take a test drive: Looking to buy some new equipment? Want to try it under real playing conditions first? Reynolds Plantation, 90 miles east of Atlanta, is offering the "Ultimate Test Drive," a round on one of its world-class courses with a rental set of new TaylorMade golf clubs including the white-hot R11 driver. Beginning at $329 per person per day (through the end of the year), the package includes a daily round of golf and complimentary replay round, accommodations in a deluxe cottage or condo, a dozen balls, discounts on fitting at the on-site TaylorMade Performance Lab, breakfast, and other amenities.

Open sesame: Fresh off his victory at Royal St. George's, Northern Ireland's Darren Clarke is designing a course at a new resort in Scotland. The Angus will be near Broughty Ferry along Dundee, along the Firth of Tay not far from Carnoustie. The resort also will have the region's first five-star hotel and a golf academy for youngsters. Clarke has already designed courses in Ireland (Castle Dargan and Moy Valley) and South Africa (Pinnacle Point)..

Islands on sale: The golf courses of Kaua'i, Hawaii's "Garden Isle," are planting a crop of deals. At Kaua'i Lagoons, golfers can enjoy unlimited play for a week at the new Kiele Moana (Ocean) Course; week-long "memberships" cost $495. At Makai Golf Club at the St. Regis Princeville Resort, a nine-hole round is $100 after 3pm (guests also receive a $50 gift card for the resort's restaurants, bars, or spa). Junior golfers (age 17 and under) can play Poipu Bay, former site of the PGA Grand Slam of Golf, for half off the adult rate any time during the day, and free after 4 p.m. when accompanied by a paying adult.

Reckless A-Bandon: Fresh on the heels of Old Macdonald, the 18-hole tribute to America's first golf architect, Charles Blair Macdonald, Bandon Dunes has another new course in the works. Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore are designing The Bandon Preserve, a 13-hole par-3 course slated to open next June. And that's not likely the end of things as the resort is negotiating with the state of Oregon for a piece of land that will be turned into a municipal course with discounted green fees for locals. The course, currently being called "Bandon Muni," would be designed by Gil Hanse.

What's Next from... Gene Bates

Salish Cliffs Golf Club, Shelton, Washington

When designing a course on the spectacular Olympic Peninsula in Washington State, how does the architect compete with the scenery?

"I made the course large because the surroundings are so big and so beautiful," explains Gene Bates about Salish Cliffs, which opens in mid-September. "Fairways are 40 to 50 yards wide and there are lots of bunkers."

Building for the Squaxin Island tribe's Little Creek Casino Resort, Bates had to carve through thick stands of evergreen and cedar, and use the elevation.

"We're in the foothills of the mountains, on the sides of hills sandwiched between little valleys. We're high enough to see Puget Sound and on a clear day we can see the tip of Mount Rainier. It's pretty special.

"There's a 600-foot change from the second hole up to the 12th tee. But it's not a really steep course because we used flat spots along the hillsides and the holes alternate up and down. Both nines finish in a little depression in the middle of the property, a perfect spot for the clubhouse.

"We also had to integrate the course with wetlands and we're the first course designated 'salmon-safe,' so we don't harm their habitats."

If anything, it sounds as if he enhanced them.