The popularity of spas and golf surprises even the most ardent devotees. According to a 2004 study by the International SPA Association, golf ranks No. 1 in estimated revenues among U.S. leisure industries and spas come in fourth, ahead of amusement/theme parks and box office receipts. In other words, we’re spending more on golf and spas than on Disney and movies.
There are approximately 12,100 spas in the United States, with most falling into three general categories: destination, resort/hotel and day. Guests stay at destination spas purely for the spa experience—to lose weight, be pampered, jump-start a healthy lifestyle, detox and/or relax. Resort/hotel spas serve as an adjunct or amenity to a resort/hotel, and day spas book appointments to the general public on a “day” or treatment basis. Some resort spas double dip, serving the destination client as well as the day user. According to ISPA, more than 70 percent of spa-goers are female, but males are catching on.
As for golf, the National Golf Foundation reports 26.2 million golfers and 16,057 facilities in the United States.
Golfers pursue their sport avidly, spending about $26.1 billion a year on golf travel, often at resorts with courses open only to guests. Unlike spa-goers, 78 percent of golfers are male—but, in this case, females are the ones catching on.
Right up front I confess: I don’t play golf. To me, “above par” just means better than average. It was the spa/resort portion of this article that lured me to accept the assignment, which was to write about two great spas, two fine golf facilities and two resorts with outstanding golf and spa combinations.
Knowing zip about golf, I had to rely on the kindness of strangers who do have expertise—and on the editors of major special-interest publications who ranked each of the following facilities No. 1 in their respective publications.
Though the chosen properties differ in style, approach and geography, they share similar traits. With the exception of Black Mesa Golf Club and Bishop’s Lodge, which sit in a class all their own, all offer high quality spa and golfing experiences; all are popular, necessitating advanced booking; and all are pricey, but often offer spa/golf packages and/or seasonal rates.
Miraval
Readers of Travel + Leisure voted Miraval the No. 1 Destination Spa in The World’s Best Awards for the last two years, and I know why. Credit the activities, the ambience, the staff, the food and, of course, the setting on 325 acres in the Sonoran Desert at the foothills of the Santa Catalina Mountains, 40 minutes north of Tucson.
A coed destination spa, Miraval focuses on balance and mindfulness, wanting guests to return home with “a new understanding and resolve to enjoy life in the here and now.” This philosophy is especially easy to adopt if the here and now is under the Arizona sun, with nothing to do but relax, renew, increase your sexual vigor, stop smoking, lose weight, be pampered, get physical or generally enhance your life.
The beauty of Miraval is that nothing is regimented, unless a guest desires it to be, and then forms are filled out and personalized programs are designed. Whatever you say you want from a spa experience is exactly what you will get at Miraval. You’ll also get coffee, wine and cocktails; Miraval is not about deprivation.
Lodging consists of more than 100 Pueblo-style casitas that form a loose semicircle around the property’s two main buildings: The Spa, with 27 treatment rooms, swimming pool and snack bar; and The Arrival Center, with meeting spaces, lounges and dining rooms.
Upon arrival (if you haven’t already done so), you’ll study the week’s program and fill in your personalized schedule with your choice of spa treatments (about 71 offered), lecture programs (covering topics from food to fertility) and activities (including yoga, horseback riding, tennis and golf).
Golfers are shuttled to the Tom Weiskopf-designed Golf Club at Vistoso in Tucson. In addition to the usual spa activities, Miraval boasts a menu of “challenge activities” de-signed to help guests lose particular fears or gain confidence. Challenges include “A Swing and a Prayer,” where the daring fly through the sky at a height of their choice while attached to cables, and the “Quantum Leap,” where individuals or couples climb high poles and jump off.
Now, to the icing on the cake: If you are what you eat, you are going to be beautiful at Miraval. The food is “soul” food in the sense that it feeds your spirit as well as your nutritional needs and sends you home vowing to eat well for the rest of your life.
For more information, contact Miraval (800-825-4000, www.miravalresort.com).
Destination Kohler
Look up Destination Kohler on the Internet and you’ll find articles packed with a dictionary’s worth of laudatory adjectives. The lion’s share of the praise flows to the resort’s golf courses, which coffee-table book Fairways: America’s Greatest Golf Resorts ranks No. 1 for “Best Challenge” and “Best Beauty.” But The American Club, with its 240 guest rooms (each with fabulous bathroom), and Kohler Waters Spa, with its water-focused facility and treatments, also win raves—which is not surprising, considering the Kohler Company manufactures high-end kitchen and bathroom fixtures and uses the resort to showcase products.
Resort facilities stretch through the Village of Kohler, located in Wisconsin’s farmland an hour’s drive north of Milwaukee. A short drive from the village center gets you to the famous Pete Dye-designed golf courses at Blackwolf Run, on the south edge of the village, and at Whistling Straits, nine miles to the northeast on Lake Michigan’s western shore.
Blackwolf Run’s two courses, River (a traditional American Parkland-style course, heavily wooded with extreme elevation changes and vistas overlooking the river valley) and Meadow Valleys (half in the river valley, half in an open meadow), are separated by the Sheboygan River and named to reflect the land they occupy.
Dye summed up Whistling Straits when he said, “I’ve never seen anything like this. Anyplace. Period.” Of Whistling Straits’ two courses, the Straits, a traditional Irish links-style golf experience, with huge sand dunes, bluffs and lake vistas, is the most celebrated. Its companion, the Irish course, features streams and bridges, undulating sand dunes and lakes. Both courses are walking only.
All courses are public, and golfers will not find four higher-ranked courses at any one resort in the country. Clubhouses at each site include a dining facility and golf shop.
Golf season depends on weather and generally runs April through October. The resort and spa welcome guests year-round.
For details, contact The American Club (800-344-2838, www.destinationkohler.com).
Sea Island
What do Jimmy Carter, Jimmy Doolittle, Herbert Hoover, Barbara Bush, Hopalong Cassidy, Anna Kournikova and John Travolta have in common? All were guests at Sea Island, a private resort island complex located off the coast of Georgia midway between Savannah and Jacksonville, Fla.
Opened in 1928, Sea Island’s The Cloister Hotel and vacation community keeps adding amenities. Recent additions to the offerings, which now stretch to neighboring St. Simons Island, include a full-service spa (FYI: First Lady Laura Bush had a facial with Emily) and The Lodge, a luxurious 40-room golf resort/club. Although the original Cloister is under reconstruction (due to open in 2006), the resort is still owned by the same family; still exudes a spirit of exclusive, private and privileged Southern hospitality; and still offers almost everything anyone with quiet taste and money could want in a vacation. But even if the guest rooms, beach, tennis facilities, restaurants and children’s programs were not so perfect, golf would bring in the accolades.
Among the awards, Gary Galyean’s Golf Letter named The Lodge the No. 1 U.S. Golf Hotel Destination, and Golf for Women placed Sea Island Golf Club first in the Top 50 Courses for Women.
Golfers play on three championship courses, all near each other on St. Simons Island, all perfectly manicured and exquisitely maintained:
The par-70 Seaside Course, with the original nine holes designed in 1929 by Colt & Alison and redesigned by Tom Fazio in 1999;
The par-72 Plantation Course, with the original nine holes designed by Walter Travis and reshaped by Rees Jones;
The par-72 Retreat Course, opened in 2001 with a re-design by Sea Island resident touring pro Davis Love III.
Add The Golf Learning Center, a state-of-the-art teaching facility with computer video analysis system and club-fitting service; 300 yards of teeing area, target greens and short game areas with ocean views; a caddie program that is considered the best in the country; ancient oaks; Atlantic breeze; a staff to see to every need; and weather that allows year-round play, and you understand why Sea Island draws the same guests year after year, generation after generation.
For more information, contact Sea Island (800-SEA-ISLAND, www.seaisland.com).
Black Mesa Golf Club and The Bishop’s Lodge Resort & Spa
Move over art, make room opera, north central New Mexico now has memorable golf to lure the tourists. Black Mesa Golf Club, a par-72 course named the country’s “Best New Affordable Public Course” for 2003 by Golf Digest, is just 21 miles north of Santa Fe in La Mesilla.
Situated on a great expanse of high desert land owned by the Santa Clara Pueblo, in a valley of sandstone cliffs and mesas, the wild and gorgeous Black Mesa Golf Club perfectly fits its environment. Rather than build, designer Baxter Spann seems to have found the course much as Michelangelo found a sculpture in a block of marble. Following the lay of the land, the course roller coasters up and down hills, through sandstone ridges and desert arroyos. Native brush and the minimal use of grass keep the landscape authentic. Blind shots, hefty carries, narrow lanes of turf and monstrous greens remind players that golf is a thinking man’s game, and intellect and strategy prevail.
Director of golf Tom Velarde says the course is “brilliantly designed to use length and angles so players of different skill levels can play together with equal enjoyment” and “that each hole is a signature hole full of surprises.” A clubhouse and café round out the golf experience, which is available year-round, weather permitting.
Black Mesa’s owners plan to build a resort on property, but until it’s up, golfers can’t do better than a stay at The Bishop’s Lodge Resort & Spa. This historic resort occupies several hundred acres in the rolling foothills of the Sangre de Cristos Mountains and sits adjacent to the Santa Fe National Forest. Despite the strong sense of being isolated in nature, the resort is only three miles from downtown Santa Fe and all its cosmopolitan activity.
Bishop’s Lodge offers 111 Southwest-style guest rooms, divided among 15 lodges spread over the forest-filled property. Small and intimate, the resort’s new SháNah Spa excels in treatments, several of which have a Native American basis. Stables, fine dining, fitness programs, pool and tennis in summer round out the amenities. As a winter bonus for golfers who want to tee and ski, The Lodge runs shuttles to New Mexico’s ski areas.
For more information, contact Black Mesa (505-747-8946, www.blackmesagolfclub.com) or The Bishop’s Lodge Resort & Spa (800-732-2240, www.bishopslodge.com).
Four Seasons Resort and Club Dallas at Las Colinas
It’s ironic that a resort that prides itself on anticipatory service (anticipating a guest’s needs before the guest has time to think of them) didn’t anticipate placing first in the Condé Nast Traveler readers’ poll of “Top 100 Golf Resorts Around the World.”
“It was a shock,” says head pro Marc Brooks. “Of course we worked very hard, but this monumental of an award, well, we were surprised.”
The Four Seasons Dallas is actually in Irving, a community situated halfway between Fort Worth and Dallas. The resort is less than 10 miles from DFW International, so golfers can be on the course minutes after stepping off the plane.
Resort guests can play the Tournament Players Course (TPC), a par-70 course designed in 1985 by Jay Morrish with input from Byron Nelson and Ben Crenshaw. Morrish oversaw a $1 million landscape and design enhancement in 1992 and another $2 million enhancement in 1999. This sleek inner-city course, surrounded by major mansions and corporate skyscrapers, has been described as “one of the most playable of all of the stadium courses.” It has also been pronounced deceptively hard to play, as entrances to the greens are open and Texas winds swirl in challenges. The course remains host site of the EDS Byron Nelson Championship each May, and Byron Nelson remains the driving spirit of the resort. A bronze statue of Nelson sits near the No. 1 tee box, the golf school (for corporate and incentive groups) wears his name, and a Bryon Nelson Championship trophy case contains a museum’s worth of his memorabilia. The full practice facility—featuring 80,000 square feet of tee space, two putting greens, a shop and a slew of special golf services—adds to a golfer’s pleasure.
Texas is noted for doing things in a big way, and the Four Seasons Dallas exemplifies this tradition, as everything about this 400-acre resort says big-time quality. In addition to 357 beautifully appointed rooms, the resort sports a new 176,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art Sports Club and a lovely, recently renovated spa, with separate, elegant men’s and women’s facilities and a staff that understands the essence of service.
For more information, contact the Four Seasons Resort and Club (972-717-0700, www.fourseasons.com/dallas).
La Costa Resort and Spa
In 1965, La Costa created the first full-service resort spa in the country. It was an instant success, especially with Hollywood stars who regularly made the 90-minute drive south to the Carlsbad, Calif., location. But it wasn’t the spa alone that drew the elite; the resort’s tennis and golf pulled in professionals. Two grass, four clay and 15 hard tennis courts hosted prestigious tennis tournaments, and two PGA Championship courses designed in part by Dick Wilson drew the golf tournaments.
La Costa reigned as top spa for years, but eventually copycats offered competition and time took a toll. Then, in 2001, KSL Resorts bought the resort and waved a magic wand to the tune of $140 million, building a new spa, renovating the 474 guest rooms, adding a restaurant and enhancing the tennis courts and golf courses. Today, tennis and golf still host championship matches, and the spa is outstanding enough to win SpaFinder’s Readers’ Choice Award for Best Megaspa.
“Mega” is the key word, as La Costa (nicknamed “La Costa-lot”) can host a crowd, which is good news for business, but sometimes bad news for maintaining serenity in the spa. Not that the spa isn’t big enough. In addition to 42 treatment rooms and separate men’s and women’s facilities, the spa holds a Yamaguchi Salon offering feng shui haircuts (oh so L.A.), a casual café serving sandwiches and salads that nod to good health and desserts and cocktails that do not, and an outdoor pool/lounging area that resembles a Club Med when conventioneers convene.
Unless one has booked a treatment, the spa charges resort guests and day visitors alike $60 just to use the facilities, throwing in a short exfoliating body-scrub service.
Next to Southern California weather, the greatest enhancement to the La Costa experience is The Chopra Center. Founded by physician and philosopher Deepak Chopra, the on-site center offers its own wellness retreats, classes, spa treatments, yoga and life-changing inspiration based on the principles of Ayurveda, a 5,000-year-old approach to health and wellness from India.
For more information, contact La Costa (800-854-5000, www.lacosta.com) or The Chopra Center (888-424-6772, www.chopra.com).
