ON THE TEE WITH DALE

ON THE TEE WITH DALE

Dale Leatherman is a freelance travel writer specializing in golf, adventure, and the Caribbean. Her writing career includes four years as a newspaper features editor, 12 years as a magazine features editor, and eight years as a website editor. She has been a full-time freelancer for more than 20 years, with articles appearing in publications such as The Robb Report, Caribbean Travel & Life, Diversion, Meetings & Conventions, LINKS, Executive Traveler, Golf for Women, and Continental. Her work also includes special advertising sections for Travel+Leisure Golf, Travel+Leisure, Attache, Sky, and the Los Angeles Times. Dale is editorial director of Caribbean Escapes, a 400-page coffee table book. E-mail DALeatherman@cs.com for reprints or rewrites for publication.

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Most businessmen and women are hard pressed to find time to play golf, much less attend a golf school. For you busy duffers, planning a family vacation or a business meeting at a resort with a golf academy can be a “two birds with one stone” scenario. Most golf resorts offer instruction, so how do you choose? Start with these pointers:

· Look for a school staffed with experienced instructors who follow a well proven teaching philosophy.

· The school should have private practice facilities, including a place to practice when it rains.

· The latest technology for videotaping students and measuring club head speed and swing efficiency are a must.

· It’s also important for the resort to have a championship course where students can pit new skills against a true test of golf.

Here's a sampler of resorts with golf schools that can shave numbers off your handicap.

Golf Digest Schools are among the leaders in instruction, and PGA National is a great location in which to learn. Three-day schools are offered for women, the short game, and general skills. The facility has two natural turf practice ranges with 150+ stations, five putting greens and an extensive Health and Racquet Club.

The final exam (self-imposed) comes when students walk in the footprints of PGA Tour stars on the resort’s five championship courses. Among them is the famous Champion Course, site of the 1983 Ryder Cup, the 1987 PGA Championship and the 1982-2000 PGA Senior Championships. The resort is also the national headquarters of the PGA of America.

Set in 2,340 beautifully landscaped acres, the resort has 339 luxury rooms and suites, a 40,000-square-foot spa offering 100 treatments, eight restaurants and lounges, 19 Har-Tru tennis courts, and a large pool overlooking a 26-acre lake.

A former NASA scientist, Dave Pelz has compiled the world’s most extensive body of research on putting and the wedge game—the area where 80 percent of pars are lost. As the technical consultant for Golf Magazine, he has written nearly 100 articles. Pelz is consistently ranked one of the top teachers in the world, and many PGA, LPGA and European tour players depend on his short-game coaching.

Dave Pelz one- to three-day Scoring Game Schools in Boca Raton, FL; Palm Springs, CA; Napa, CA; Homestead, MI; Reynolds Plantation, GA; and Vail, CO are attended by tour and teaching professionals as well as amateurs. Focusing specifically on shots within 100 yards – distance wedges, pitching, chipping, sand play and putting -- Pelz’s goal is for golfers to know what they need to learn, how to learn it, and how to use what they’ve learned.

At the Lodge and Spa at Cordillera in Colorado, the Pelz-designed teaching facility has a unique element -- the first Dave Pelz 10-hole Short Course.

“The Short Course requires 80 percent of the shots you would hit in a normal round,” says Pelz, “but only uses 25 percent of the land and can be played in one-third of the time of a typical 18-hole championship course.”

Set atop a spectacular plateau, the course is a fine complement to the resort’s Mountain Course by Hale Irwin, the Valley Course by Tom Fazio, and the new Jack Nicklaus-designed Summit Course.

The mountaintop resort’s Belgian-style chateau has 56 well appointed guest rooms. Activities include private Eagle River fishing, a world-class spa, horseback riding, hiking (with access to a million acres of wilderness), three tennis centers, five indoor and outdoor pools and four fitness centers.

Voted the world’s best golf resort by Conde Nast Traveler readers, the Greenbrier has earned a host of accolades for more than 226 years of knowing–and providing–what people want. This is especially true for golfing guests, who have access to three fine courses.

Since 1999, the resort has also been an outstanding place to learn the nuances of the game. The academy has a 1.5-acre tee area; four putting, chipping and practice greens (one 10,200 square feet); and a 165-foot-long practice bunker, as well as a fairway practice bunker. The academy building has six covered hitting and putting areas, along with a lounge and classrooms.

After lessons, students play on three outstanding layouts, including the tough Nicklaus-designed Greenbrier Course, a former Ryder Cup and Solheim Cup venue; the Meadows, a scenic and strategic Bob Cupp redesign; and the Old White, which has a new look and feel this spring (2006) following several years of work by Lester George to restore and upgrade the historic Charles B. Macdonald layout.

Desptie the fact that I live 90 minutes from the resort and visit it often, I never tire of it, and I always find something exciting or new to do. There are more than 50 recreational pursuits at the 6,500-acre resort, and the spa is one of the best in the world. No less superb are the accommodations--739 rooms, suites and estate houses—and a variety of dining venues.

Browsing the memento-laden halls of the Pinehurst Resort main clubhouse –a stroll through 100 years of the resort’s golf history--is enough to make anyone want to play the game, or play it better.

Fortunately, the resort’s Golf Advantage School is just a few steps away. The director of instruction is Eric Alpenfels, a Pinehurst fixture since 1985 who is one of Golf Digest’s “50 Greatest Teachers,” and Golf Magazine’s “Top 100 Teachers in America.”

Next door to the school is the University of Pittsburgh’s Golf Fitness Lab, a high-tech facility that will get you on the right track to your best game via complete fitness and swing analysis.

Homework takes place on any of the eight courses in the 2,000-acre piney woods resort/village, including Donald Ross’ classic No. 2, site of the 1999 and 2005 U.S. Opens.

Lodging at Pinehurst is in three elegant Southern inns in the historic village, with many good restaurants either in the hotels or a short walk away. The 31,000-square-foot spa has been a great addition to the Pinehurst experience, which is decidedly skewed to golf.

The Pinehurst Golf School is available at two other Pinehurst Company resorts: Barton Creek Resort, the “Golf Capital of Texas” in Austin, TX (800-336-6158; www.bartoncreek.com), and the historic Homestead Resort in Hot Springs, VA (800-838-1766; www.thehomestead.com). Both resorts have the some of the best golf courses in their respective states.

The new facility at the World Golf Village has a staff of top-rated instructors, including Calvin Peete, a 12-time winner on the PGA Tour. The director of instruction is Steve Sackett, a Golf Magazine top 100 teacher.

“At the Tour Academy we have devised a simple system of applying fundamentals with a positive mental approach,” says Sackett. “Looking at the golf swing, the only thing that matters is impact, because that’s the only thing the ball responds to. We teach our students to understand a proper impact position and how to get there. We use extensive video, because it helps the student and gives us the luxury of a perfect analysis every time.”

The academy’s Visual Edge system compares students’ swings to top professionals on a monitor. The ModelGolf video swing analysis uses a student’s physical characteristics to determine his ideal swing. During on-course instruction, the Golf Logix video provides statistics on performance and equipment under different playing situations.

The academy is the first to carry the PGA Tour name, but the Tour does not endorse any specific teaching method. PGA Tour players, all of whom have different teaching styles, have unlimited access to the facility and can be tapped for clinics and corporate functions.

The World Golf Village, a 6,300-acre resort with two championship golf courses--the King & Bear and the Slammer and Squire—is home to the Renaissance Hotel, a 300-room atrium tower in a garden setting, and the World Golf Hall of Fame, where great new interactive exhibits are being prepared.

Florida in the winter. Upstate New York in the summer. In either location you can enjoy balmy weather at a luxury golf resort with a Ron Philo School of Golf.

Ron Philo, Sr. is 20+-year PGA professional, a PGA section “Teacher of the Year,” and is ranked among Golf Digest’s “50 Best Teachers” in Florida. Ron’s daughter is Laura Diaz, a two-time winner on the LPGA Tour in 2002. Among his other notable students: PGA Tour players David Duval and Charlie Rymer, and his son, Ron Philo, Jr. A veteran of the PGA Nike Tour, Ron, Jr. teaches with his father at Amelia Island, along with former LPGA Tour player Beverly Davis. A 3:1 student/teacher ratio in both locations maximizes personal attention.

Philo’s program is based on the premise that students should focus of gathering information. “We help our students to gain confidence through self-reliance,” he says. “By understanding the golf swing, students are able to create a swing that feels right to them. We want them to leave with a better ability to apply and understand the information we give them.”

At Amelia Island Plantation, the school occupies a secluded grove of ancient live oaks near the Tom Fazio-designed Long Point Course. It has its own driving range and putting and chipping green. Students can practice under playing conditions on Long Point, Amelia Links (36 holes designed by Pete Dye and Bobby Weed) or Royal Amelia, a Tom Jackson design. The 72-hole complex ranges from marshland to oak forest to ocean dunes.

Located on a barrier island, Amelia Island Plantation is a secluded 1,350-acre beach resort existing in careful harmony with the surrounding forest and wildlife. Accommodations are in the 249-room Amelia Inn and Beach Club or in spacious condominiums overlooking the beach. The resort offers a full range of recreational activities and lots of dining choices.

Philo’s school at the Otesaga Resort’s Leatherstocking Golf Course has an 11-acre Bob Cupp-designed driving range with natural grass tees and a number of target greens and practice bunkers. The major tee area is 33,000 square feet, with 12,500 feet exclusively for teaching.

Leatherstocking, a 1909 Devereaux Emmet design, is a daunting lakeside track amply studded with water and deep sand bunkers, and with a finishing hole reminiscent of Pebble Beach. The terrain often rises to elevations that offer sweeping views of the lake, the “Glimmerglass” of James Fenimore Cooper’s Leatherstocking Tales.

The Iroquois name for the lake, “o-te-sa-ga,” means “place to meet,” which is true certainly true of the 93-year-old Otesaga Resort, with its 180-foot-long veranda overlooking the lake. It is a set piece in the slice of Americana that is Cooperstown. The 136-room Georgian hotel returned to its former grandeur in a $34 million restoration a few years ago.

Among the most respected names in golf is that of Peggy Kirk Bell, one of the nation’s best amateurs in the 1940s, a charter member of the LPGA, and one of the finest teachers in the game. In the 1950s, she and her late husband bought the Pine Needles Lodge and Golf Club, where she established a series of golf schools called “golfaris.” The theory: a blend of great golf and good times. The program has grown, refined and specialized. In 1969, Bell launched the Youth Golfari, one of the first golf camps for youngsters. Her highly respected Ladies Only Golfaris with top LPGA players take place in the perfect setting–Pine Needles always ranks well in Golf for Women’s “women friendly” course lists.

Fifteen-year PGA Tour player Patrick Ray McGowan, who qualified to play on the Champions Tour in 2005, heads a staff of 49 instructors with a collective teaching experience of more than 1,000 years. The student/teacher ratio is 3:1. Particular emphasis is placed on short game development. The Learning Center has four hitting areas that can accommodate 20-30 golfers each, more than 80 hitting stations (20 covered), four practice greens, four large bunkers that will accommodate 15 golfers each, and a four-hole practice course.

The two courses at Pine Needles and Mid-Pines are Donald Ross designs built in the 1920s. Pine Needles is the site of the 1996, 2002 and 2007 U.S. Women Open Championships. The 2002 USGA Senior Women’s Amateur Championship was held on Mid Pines.

No matter how your skills are developing, it would be difficult not to enjoy Pine Needles and Mid-Pines. Pine Needles 11 rustic chalets have all modern conveniences and are connected to the clubhouse, with its restaurant, lounge and golf shop. The Mid-Pines Inn is a 1920s Georgian-style structure with 112 rooms and six villas. The Grand Dining Room is located in the inn, next to a dining terrace.