The final push for the 2016 Olympic Summer Games is on. The Olympic committee will vote on the host city October 2nd in Copenhagen, and also vote to determine if golf should make its re-entry into the games. President Obama and the First Lady are both in Copenhagen this week pushing for their hometown of Chicago. The three other finalist cities are Madrid, Tokyo and Rio de Janiero. Madrid and Chicago would make the most sense for golf’s entry in to the Olympics, with Cog Hill in Chicago available and numerous good courses surrounding Madrid. Tokyo and Rio have golf, ...

PGA Tour commissioner Tim Finchem foreshadowed a little gloom last week regarding the future of some PGA Tour title sponsors, and we’ve already got our first casualty: The Verizon Heritage Classic on Hilton Head Island, staged on Harbour Town Golf Links will not renew its contract after it ends in 2010. It doesn’t surprise me that the first stop to lose its sponsor is a one that Tiger Woods doesn’t compete in. The Heritage traditionally plays the week after the Masters, so many big names take the week off. It’s not Tiger’s doing the sponsorship is gone. Prize money has ...

Golf World magazine released their new golf course Readers Choice Awards this week, and while I’m always pretty skeptical of course rankings, I’m really liking the Golf World user-feedback ranking system. It produces a more honest list for the everyday golfer compared to Golf Magazine’s panel that is more old guard. I especially like how Golf World created three stand-alone categories: Public, Resort and Private, because each serves a completely different purpose for their patrons. Also, there are ten categories, from conditioning to off-course amenities, so this rates a club on the overall experience, which is closer to what the ...

Summer may be over in Michigan, but there’s still golf amongst the changing of the fall colors to be played in October. So we’re not adverse to rolling out more articles in the next couple weeks from my recent northern Michigan golf trip, where I played nine courses in five days and could count every cloud I saw in the sky during the week on one hand. Here’s a few things we’ve posted from the jam-packed trip thus far, with plenty more on the way: I was a guest on the Michigan Talk Network with Michael Patrick Shiels in ...

Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday has a special going at the moment: Buy 40 golf trips, get one free. Okay, I jest. But for a foursome from Pennsylvania, they celebrated their 40th Myrtle Beach golf trip in a row in with a complimentary golf vacation courtesy of Golf Holiday. Local TV news caught up to them on their trip at the Grande Dunes Members Club, quite a step up, considering these guys booked their first trip for $25 a day 40 years ago. Click here to watch, and click here for my review of Grande Dunes from earlier this spring, a ...

If you’ve been considering a Costa Del Sol golf vacation to Spain, here’s as good of an excuse as any to take the plunge: The Costa Del Sol Golf Challenge, held March 9th-14th on four area golf courses around Marbella: Los Flamingos, Gran Flamingos, San Roque New Course and La Quinta. The format will be a four-man,l best ball 3/4 Stableford. One golf package for the event that’s popped up on my radar from Simply Golf Holidays includes five nights accommodations at Hotel Andalucia Plaza, gala dinner, welcome reception, golf transfers and more for €680 (about $950). And the good ...

The paspalum turf domino effect is continuing along the world’s island and warm weather golf courses. Following next door Kiahuna Golf Club and the Princeville Makai’s lead, Poipu Bay Golf Course on the Hawaiian island of Kauai will close in April of 2010 for approximately eight months to reseed their bermuda greens with salt tolerant, water-efficient paspalum. When I played Poipu Bay a few years ago, it was as scenic of a coastal course as there is in this world, but the greens were a bit more grainy compared to Princeville and next door Kiahuna (which already uses paspalum form ...

Is there anything more anti-climactic than when you’re watching a football game on TV and there’s a huge, 80-yard run to win the game, the crowd goes wild, and the camera cuts to a cluster of fans and 90% of them are, you guessed it, TEXTING!! It drives me nuts that so many fans twiddle on their phones all game. And in sports like baseball or hockey, it’s damned dangerous. Fans should have their eye on the ball/puck at all times because it could be flying at their skull any second. At baseball stadiums, I’m convinced that at any given ...

This week, Myrtle Beach will celebrate the ground breaking of a new $6 million beachfront boardwalk that will extend from 14th Ave North to 2nd Ave North. Click here for info and artists renditions of the project. Apparently this boardwalk has been a long time in the making, though I’d assume any project that takes place on the coast has a good deal of hoops to jump through: The $6 million boardwalk project was conceived in 1999 as a development that would enhance the Myrtle Beach visitor experience and revitalize Myrtle Beach’s downtown sector. Traversing through the sand ...

Fresh up on TravelGolf.com is a feature on San Francisco Bay-area golf leading up to the Presidents Cup next month. I visited the Bay Area for the first time in August for four days, checking out municipal Harding Park Golf Course and Olympic Club’s par-3 Cliffs Course (where hang gliders are flying over you at all times) and the Links at Bodega Harbour over the Golden Gate Bridge north in Sonoma. The feature includes both golf and off-course things to do, timely for those who will be at the event but serves as a starter guide should you be headed ...

I travel a lot to play golf, but I’ve never teed it up in Arizona, New Mexico or California’s desert. According to Golf Magazine’s latest Top 100 Golf Courses in America rankings, I’m not missing much. I’ve been perusing their new list a bit since they were released recently, just as I’ve done since I was about ten years old and discovered there were better courses in the world compared to my ol’ munis in Ann Arbor. Even the folks at Golf will tell you their rankings aren’t perfect. I don’t think anyone’s asking for “perfect,” we just don’t want ...

Serena Williams’ meltdown at a defenseless (and what looks like correct) line judge at the U.S. Open this weekend was difficult to watch. Brandt Snedeker’s Sunday four-putt on the 18th hole at the BMW Championship was gut-wrenching TV of a different variety. Sports fans last remember the bashful Snedeker from the 2008 Masters, when he entered the back nine on Sunday as the best shot to catch eventual champion Trevor Immelman. He faltered at Amen Corner and broke down into tears afterwards. A lot of us out there became fans of Snedeker after his raw showing of emotion. It makes ...

A noteworthy free golf giveaway just came across my desk: a five-night, six-round giveaway, including rental car and accommodations for two in Alberta’s Canadian Rockies good for the summer of 2010. I visited the six clubs in July, and they offer a wonderful mix of courses that all share one similar element: mountain golf in the heart of the Canadian wilderness. Few, if any destinations make you feel such a part of nature as here. This golf destination isn’t new. The 1920s brought two Stanley Thompson courses, Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge and Fairmont Banff Springs. For fans of classical golf ...

One of the Rocky Mountain West’s most prolific modern golf course architects, Jim Engh, serves up two northern Michigan golf designs, and both are welcomed additions in the past decade to the state’s already rich golf scene here: Tullymore Golf Club and True North Golf Club. Both are very visually pleasing to the eye (and the camera if you’ve got it with you), but have their share of differences too. Tullymore is set on 800 acres of wetlands in Stanwood. The terrain is mostly flat, relying on a lot of shaping and mounding to keep things interesting, plus a lot more ...

CHARLEVOIX, MI – Twice in my golf travel lifetime have I played more than 36 holes in one day, and both are courtesy of the courses of Northern Michigan. A few years back, my friend and I took on 54 holes at the Garland Resort, thanks to long summer days and four first tee boxes of championship courses located within a couple hundred yards of each other at one facility. This past week, it was a bit more complicated: We started by teeing off at the crack of dawn at Dunmaglas near Charlevoix, followed by an hour drive to Treetops ...