It’s easy to confuse the Pinehurst area with Pinehurst Resort. After all, Pinehurst Resort is home to one of the world’s most famous courses (No. 2) and hosts numerous USGA championships (including the U.S. Open).

If you go to Scotland, everyone will later ask if you played the Old Course at St. Andrews (standrews.org.uk, 01334-466666), and for good reason: It’s golf’s most famous course and a surreal experience to play. So if you’ve never been there, be sure to book it.

Twenty-Six Million Americans play golf, and many of them travel each year to tee it up, but only about 500,000 of them do so in Mexico. This troubled Carlos Kviat, the President of Discover Golf Mexico, a new website (www.discovergolfmexico.com) devoted to making travel south of the border efficient and worry-free. “We [Kviat and founders Marcelino Barrenechea and Luis Velazquez] detected the five most important destinations that attract the most international golfers.” In doing so, Kviat created what he calls the “first premier Mexican golf tour operator.”

Towering above the island of Kauai is one of the wettest places on earth, Mt. Wai’ale’ale. It’s the island’s second tallest mountain peak, and with 460 inches of annual rainfall, boasts lush rain forests, vibrant flowers and waterfalls that cascade down Kauai’s steep mountain cliffs. It’s a beautiful thing to behold,especially when you’re miles away on a dry golf course.

When Jack Nicklaus’ Tradition Course opened at Reunion Resort in late 2006, it joined two other championship courses designed by living legends. Arnold Palmer’s Legacy Course and Tom Watson’s Independence Course  were already on site and had received critical acclaim, not to mention the honor of hosting the annual Ginn Open, one of only a handful of LPGA tournaments televised on network TV.

Don’t worry Augusta isn’t the Southeast’s only exclusive layout. If you crave manicured fairways and first-class facilities (that are open to the public), then tee it up on one of these top-notch Southeast resorts. After all they’re just a short drive from Augusta National and a heck of a lot easier to get on. 

Now that Web 2.0 has officially arrived and 20 percent of the world is online, it’s only natural that a large number of golfers are gravitating to their computers to do the same thing they once did over the phone or in person: book vacations, reserve tee times and buy equipment.

Say "island golf" to someone and they’ll probably picture Hawaii or some other tropical destination. But the word “island” doesn’t always equal swaying palms and surfers hanging ten a sand wedge away from the fairway. After all, golf was invented on an island where weather is anything but balmy.