This Week at TravelGolf.com: Feb. 22, 2005

There is something special about being able to watch the PGA's best take on a course you've stumbled and bumbled around. It is a unique pleasure to golf. Your chances of ever getting to catch a pass on Lambeau Field or step into the batter's box at Yankee Stadium are about the same as the odds of Ashton Kutcher taking home a gold statue this Sunday.

Unless you're a celebrity mascot, a la Billy Crystal with his overblown Yankee puppy love, you're not getting on sports' shrines. Not without a band of big, burly security guards giving chase.

Except in golf. Only in this easy-to-love, easy-to-be-infuriated-by game, do the mere mortals with five-figure salaries and 30-year mortgages get to take their hacks on some of the same courses the pros do. Inevitably, these are rounds you relive often. Suddenly, Tiger Woods is birding a hole on TV and the memories of your quadruple bogey on that very same hole come rushing back (no one ever said all remembrances were pleasant).

This is part of golf's allure, why so many people who've played La Costa over the last 40 years will be waxing poetic during this week's Accenture Match Play Championship. Or maybe just whining miserably at Pavlovian reflex if they played under the pro rough conditions.

Golf is best when it's watched with stories to tell. And a place like La Costa where Ben Hogan brought his steely glare and where Tiger Woods uses secret passageways to escape autograph seekers (more on that later this week at TravelGolf.com) provides a perfect stage.

It's golf. It does not matter if you arrived on your own Lear Jet or a hand-me-down, beaten-down RV, once you get to that special course. Memories are equal opportunity.

As always your comments are welcome on any topic, including your best stories from the courses where you've followed in PGA players' swing steps.

La Costa offers a
PGA Tour punisher in winter

Welcome to the La Costa resort courses around Accenture Match Play Championship time. In the weeks before and after the tournament, nine holes on both La Costa's North and South courses are open for play with PGA Tournament rough. And not just any ho-hum, 25-under PGA Tournament rough. But according to senior writer Chris Baldwin, it's a challenge many average golfers are eager to experience.

Full story | Tiger's other Match Play game

South Africa a relatively
undiscovered location for golfers

According to national golf editor Tim McDonald, now is the perfect time to visit South Africa, with its sunny days, cool nights and a wealth of choices for excellent golf courses, some of them world-class. Combine a golf safari with a wild game safari and you can have a truly amazing experience. It's impossible to list all the great courses in South Africa, but here is a short list of courses to play.

Full story | South Africa Golf Courses

Scottsdale actually more
sinfully fun than Las Vegas

Recent trips to both Sin City and Senior City revealed that it's no Jose-Canseco-truth-teller stretch to declare that Scottsdale is actually the more seriously decadent golf destination. "Suspend your Dan Rather disbelief for a moment," writes Chris Baldwin. "Read on and you'll find six sinful reasons Scottsdale outsizzles Las Vegas for your golf dollar."

Full story | Scottsdale Golf Courses