It seems appropriate to pause this week on The Timeshare Authority blog to talk about the game of golf. With the British Senior Open wrapped up and the US Senior Open set to tee off, you have to look at such events and reflect on the fact that anyone — amateur or pro — past champion or tournament rookie – has the opportunity to polish his skill, go out on one of sport’s biggest stages and write his name in the history books. And while the same is true for all events in professional golf that permit open qualifying, there’s something to be said about the idea that a man, 50 years old or older, who may have never competed in a pro tournament before, has the opportunity to become the US Senior Open Champion.

Golf is one of the few sports you can take up as a child and play throughout your lifetime. Because of the handicapping system, your teenage son can play a round of golf with Grandma, on a level playing field. Families can share the game; they can play together, play on their home course, and play while on vacation. Professional golf superstar, Luke Donald, credits his early interest in the game to playing at his family’s timeshare.

Even physical challenges don’t have to stand in your way of enjoying the game of golf. If you haven’t read Dave Kindred’s Golf Digest article this month on the triumph injured war veterans are claiming on the golf course, (“The Healing Game”) I encourage you to do so. In it, golf professional Jim Estes explains, “Fear inhibits the ordinary person’s ability to perform. But these guys — they have no fear. When your leg is blown off, who cares if you don’t hit that little white ball perfectly?”

Yet as U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Ramon Padilla, injured in Afghanistan, says after taking up the game, “I had a sense of accomplishment. I thought, I may be missing an arm, but I’m still whole, I’m still one person.”

This week, as the favorites at the US Senior Open tee up at the beautiful Sahalee Country Club (just outside of Seattle, WA.), I will likely be pulling for some amateur playing who qualified on a wing and prayer. There is something uniquely inspirational about the idea that an ordinary guy can do extraordinary things, through a combination of determination, hard work, and perhaps a little luck.

• You can learn more about golf timeshares at: Take a Timeshare Golf Vacation in an Orlando Timeshare and Myrtle Beach Timeshare Resales
• And find out how all of us can do more to help wounded veterans at: woundedwarriorproject.org

Enjoy this excellent video of Luke Donald’s swing:

For the eighth year, Holiday Inn Club Vacations at Orange Lake will be the Central Florida host for what is considered to be the largest single-day, charity golf tournament in the world. Annually, the RCI Christel House Open is played at 19 golf tournament sites across five continents with more than 1800 golfers participating. One hundred percent of the charity tournament proceeds go to services that benefit the children of Christel House mission, a non-profit charity founded by Christel DeHaan, the co-founder of Resort Condominiums International (RCI).

You can be part of this golfing event at Orange Lake Resort, (scheduled for Monday, Jmailto:kchase@orangelake.com
une 7), playing the resort’s 18-hole, Arnold Palmer-designed course, a favorite with area golfers, vacationers, and a host of mini-tour events that compete there throughout the year. Sponsorship opportunities are still available. To learn more, contact Cathy Duncan, Manager of Corporate Events for Orange Lake Resorts timeshare, at cduncan@orangelake.com or call 407-905-1979. You can also select this outstanding course and timeshare resort as the site for your next golf outing or company tournament by contacting, Kimberly Chase, Assistant Director, Golf Sales & Marketing, at kchase@orangelake.com or by calling 407-905-1378.

Golf and Timeshares

In so many different ways, golf and timeshares always go together. In general, the quality of daily fee golf courses improves all the time as advances in agronomy and turf management make it easier to maintain high playability standards, even at public courses. This means you can stay in your timeshare, timeshare resale or timeshare rental and take advantage of playing many courses located near your vacation destination.

Other timeshares offer resort courses of exceptional quality. Often getting a tee time on these courses is challenging, requiring you to book months in advance—unless you are staying on property at that resort. Timeshare owners sometimes find they can get on the courses that other golfers only dream about playing.

For anyone who wants a Florida timeshare with year-round golfing conditions, and a PGA Tour tournament quality golf course, there is no better choice than Doral timeshares at the Doral Golf Resort and Spa in Miami, Florida.

Golfers already know that the famed Blue Monster at Doral, home of the World Golf Championships-CA Championship, has hosted PGA TOUR events for more than 45 years. But many fans of the game don’t realize that Doral offers four other courses that are equally as exciting to play.

Golf Vacations at Marriott’s Villas Doral Timeshare

This week, Doral Golf Resort officially unveils the new “Jim McLean Signature Golf Course” (formerly known as the Silver). The course, redesigned under the watchful eye of renowned golf guru Jim McLean, features some of the most challenging holes on any golf course in Florida.

7100 yards long, the par 70 course starts you off with 3 very exciting holes, each a nearly 500-yard, par 4. On the back nine, holes 13, 14, and 15 are formidably known as the “Bermuda Triangle”.

Even if your schedule won’t permit you to be a part of the November 13-15 launch of The Jim McLean Signature Course, a Doral timeshare resale or Doral timeshare rental will make it easy for you to regularly test your skills at this amazing golf and timeshare resort.

With Marriott’s Villas at Doral timeshares you can choose which course to play, lessons at the on-property Jim McLean Golf School, a relaxing day at the world famous Doral Spa, and then top it off with the glittering nightlife of Miami Beach.

When you consider an Orlando timeshare, you have to also include the resorts in the nearby communities of Kissimmee-St. Cloud, Clermont, Davenport, and Lake Buena Vista, all of which are part of the Orlando-Central Florida vacation area. With several hundred golf courses in this locale, you could actually own one Florida timeshare, yet work your way around to an almost endless number of great courses, some of which are or have been tour stops for the PGA and LPGA Tours.

Favorite Golf Courses to Play during your Orlando Timeshare Vacation

At Walt Disney World play the resort courses of Lake Buena Vista, Osprey Ridge, the Palm, the Magnolia, or the nine-hole Oak Trails. The Grand Cypress Resort offers 27 holes of championship golf, plus the Jack Nicklaus designed New Course, reminiscent of St. Andrews with its pot bunkers, stone walls, and links-style play.

Plan to play the two outstanding Greg Norman designed eighteen-hole resort courses at Champions Gate, site of the World Points Father/Son Challenge. And Marriott Orlando offers the Hawk’s Landing Golf Club, Grande Pines Golf Club and the Grande Vista Golf Club, with the Nick Faldo golf school to help you polish your swing and improve your putting.

Take an Orlando Timeshare Vacation, Where Golf is Always In Season

It’s looking like Fall in much of the US and your home course may already be closed for the season, but will anyone in your family ever say “no” to a Florida timeshare vacation? If you are like many golfers who find that golfing time overlaps family time, then a Florida timeshare becomes the perfect vacation choice. You can spend time on the links while other members of your family swim, shop, or visit the attractions.

Whether you tee up in Miami, Orlando, Tampa, Daytona Beach, Naples, Pensacola, or St Augustine, the state of Florida offers more top-quality golf courses, more exciting Florida timeshare resorts, and more days each year perfect for a round of golf than anywhere else on earth.

Golf’s elite players and most ardent and well-heeled fans thought they were all set to become timeshare owners at St. Andrews. Four years ago, Wasserman Real Estate Capital secured the consent of planners to convert Hamilton Hall at St. Andrews into luxury timeshares.

The 114-year-old historic building, which sits adjacent to the Royal & Ancient (R&A) Golf Club of St Andrews, was once the famed Grand Hotel of Scotland where Edward VIII, George VI, and even Rudyard Kipling vacationed by the sea. In 1949, the building was converted into student housing for the University of St. Andrews and was used as such until it was sold in 2005 to Wasserman for approximately £20 million.

However, we all know what has happened to the real estate market since the celebratory day when Wasserman announced it had secured £84.3 million in project finance from Bank of Scotland. Instead of building 23 luxury golf timeshare apartments to be sold to 115 timeshare owners as “resident memberships” for between £750,000 and £1.9 million, (plus annual fee), Bank of Scotland found itself repossessing the property that Wasserman could no longer afford.

Now the Good News about Golf Timeshare at St. Andrews

Yet news last week says the golf timeshare project may be back on track. American businessman Herb Kohler, (a name you may recognize from the fixtures in your bathroom) already owns the luxury Old Course Hotel that sits at the other end of St. Andrews’ eighteen hole. And reports say Kohler is in the market to purchase the Hamilton Hall property for an estimated £14 million to £15 million.

Pending any unexpected problems or protests by Wasserman that believes it was unfairly evicted, Kohler may soon be the new owner of Hamilton Hall and golf timeshares on the eighteenth at St. Andrews may become a reality after all.

If Wyndham had been buying television sports drama, they could not have done better than the Wyndham Championship’s final round on Sunday that offered a first time Tour winner, a three-hole sudden-death playoff, and a one-inch bunker shot miss by Sergio Garcia to keep him out of the playoffs. As Greensboro News-Record writer, Robert Bell put it, “How do you improve upon a tournament that sold out in an economy that has bottomed out?”

The PGA Tour’s Greensboro Open (as the event was originally called prior to Wyndham and others becoming title sponsors) has a long and celebrated history in golf. For years, this tournament was the last PGA Tour stop in the spring before the players headed to Augusta, serving as a warm-up to the Masters. Ask the average golf buff what he or she knows about this tournament and Sam Snead’s name always comes up. This tournament proved to be a history-making event for the legendary Sam Snead who not only won the Greater Greensboro Open’s inaugural tournament in 1938, but won it again in 1946, 1949, 1950, 1955, 1956, 1960, and 1965.

Sam Snead’s eight victories in this event is a PGA Tour tournament record number of wins of the same tournament by a single player. His 1965 win in Greensboro at the age of 52 years, 10 months, 8 days, makes him the oldest winner of a PGA Tour tournament—years before the introduction of the graphite shaft produced lighter, easier to swing clubs. Both of Snead’s records in Greensboro stand after 44 years.

Wyndham Hotel and Wyndham Timeshare’s Future with this PGA Tour Tournament

Wyndham Hotel and Wyndham Timeshare’s contract with the PGA Tour expires after next year’s tournament, with Wyndham having the option to extend its arrangement for two more years. The PGA Tour hopes instead to get Wyndham to extend its deal until 2014.

Sponsoring a tournament on the men’s tour doesn’t come cheap. Wyndham spends some $26 million to brand this event with their name and then uses it not only to expand their visibility, but as a way to do some serious entertaining of important business contacts. Some speculate that Wyndham chairman Steve Holmes and tournament chairman Bobby Long would like to see the tournament moved to earlier in the season when they reason that the course will be in better shape and their guests more flexible to attend, rather than late August with the start of school approaching in many areas.

For Wyndham, signing that longer deal would certainly give them more negotiating power with the PGA Tour about changing the tournament’s dates. On the other hand, as PGA Tour Network correspondent Brian Katrek pointed out, leaving the Wyndham Championship scheduled for the week before the Tour goes to the Fed Ex Cup playoffs, creates exactly the kind of jockeying for position in the FedEx Cup standings and battle to the finish that we saw on Sunday.

Possible Tournament Favorite for the Folks at Wyndham Hotels and Wyndham Timeshare

Adding one more interesting twist to the interworking of the Wyndham Championship is a point brought out in Bell’s article, who wondered if Wyndham officials weren’t quietly rooting for Sergio Garcia. Bell noted that, RCI, a holding of Wyndham timeshare, has 160 Spain timeshare resorts (Garcia’s homeland), and another 700 plus Mexico timeshares and South America timeshares, meaning that an international winner of Garcia’s statue would be widely publicized by the Spanish and Latin media.

…Interesting, but as we all know about golf, the ball doesn’t know or care who hits it, leaving little room for politics and positioning in the game.

See the wrap up of this tournament, and watch the “one inch” that stood between Sergio Garcia and his chance to be part of the play off. This video also includes comments by Brian Katrek on scheduling for this always-successful event.

Marriott Vacation Club International (Marriott Timeshare) has expanded the Napili Villas as part of the final expansion phase scheduled for Maui Ocean Club Hawaii timeshares.


A total of 71 new two and three-bedroom timeshare villas are part of the expansion, along with a sports court, new swimming pool area with bar, and a fitness center. These beautiful Hawaii timeshares include fully furnished kitchens, Wi-Fi access, luxury showers, and multiple flat-panel televisions.

Marriott Timeshare Resales on the Beach

With opportunities in Maui Ocean Club timeshare resales starting at under $10,000, Hawaii timeshare at this elegant Ka’anapali Beach resort property has never been more affordable. The beautiful beach was once a favorite vacation destination of Hawaiian kings and is an ideal spot for you to plan a “royal” Hawaii timeshare vacation.

Adjacent to the Ka’anapali Golf Club, your Hawaii timeshare vacation at the Napili Villas puts you in an ideal location for experiencing the thrill of golf at this PGA Tour Stop (former home of the EMC Ka’anapali Classic Golf Tournament) and the 2008 venue for the Big Break Ka’anapali.

The Palm Desert, California timeshare, Marriott’s Shadow Ridge resort, has completed phase 7 of a 14-phase development plan. Phase 7 construction at the timeshare resort included 2 buildings and 73 two-bedroom Marriott timeshare villas. At this time, 19 buildings have been completed, housing 523 timeshare villas, of the planned 972 timeshare villas.

Phase I development on this California timeshare property began in 1999, when a timeshare sales office and maintenance facility were started. Today the property includes the clubhouse, restaurant, spa, registration center, 2000 square foot pool with bar, grill and children’s beach, along with the timeshare units. The additional golf amenities are particularly outstanding including a golf pro shop with swing studio, lockers, club fitting, and golf admin center, adding to the pleasure of play and practice at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Golf Club and the Faldo Golf Institute by Marriott, both part of the overall resort.

Construction on Phase 8 at the 300-acre resort is not scheduled to begin until 2010, at which time R. D. Olson Construction will resume their work to complete the rest of the planned development at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Timeshare Resort.

“This project allowed us to use our inventiveness and skills to build a desert resort with one-of-a-kind design elements that create intrigue and entertainment,” said Robert Olson, CEO/president, R.D. Olson Construction.

Click here to read the Olson media release about the work at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Timeshare: http://www.prweb.com/releases/construction/resorts/prweb2675244.htm

And follow these links to learn more about vacation ownership opportunities at this beautiful desert oasis, just perfect for golfers or spa and poolside relaxation in a California timeshare:

• Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Timeshare Resales
• Marriott’s Shadow Ridge Timeshare Rentals

As the talented pros and amateurs take to the golf course this week at the 64th US Open, we will watch veterans of ladies’ professional golf along with some rising young stars, battle it out at Saucon Valley Country Club, in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania.

The amateur’s field is young and extremely talented, including 13-year-old Yueer Feng; 16-year-old Jessica Korda (who last year finished T-19 in this event); and 14-year-old Alexis Thompson, who first qualified for the U.S. Women’s Open, at the age of 12, and has since won the 2008 U.S. Girls’ Junior Golf Championship.

Nearly 30 teenage or young adult golfers have already accomplished something spectacular just to be playing in this field as amateurs, not to mention the young pros Paula Creamer and Morgan Pressel, ages 22 and 21, who have already won 2 Majors and 8 LPGA Tour events between them.

So is your son, daughter, or grandchild, the next Tiger Woods or Annika Sorentam? Even if a pro career isn’t in the future for your offspring, how about a college athletic scholarship or simply the chance to build skills, character, and confidence that will carry him or her through a lifetime?

Timeshare Vacations and Family Golf Outings

Many timeshares resorts are at or near wonderful golf courses. Sometimes, owning timeshare even lets you get on courses where tee times are not available to the public, or affords you discount rates for play or practice. Timeshares and families go together, which makes it ideal that timeshares and golf go together so well, too.

The Welk Resorts timeshare in San Diego currently offers its timeshare owners or timeshare renters complimentary full swing golf clinics on Tuesdays; putting clinics on Wednesdays; and chipping clinics on Thursdays. They provide all the equipment, and you don’t even have to preregister.

Select Marriott Resorts allows children under the age of 15 to play free after 3PM when accompanied by a paying adult. Kids can also receive a free golf lesson when accompanied by an adult who is taking a fully paid golf lesson from a Marriott Golf instructor. (Availability and restrictions may apply.)

And while you will find lots of great deals on rounds of golf and golf instruction at your favorite timeshare resorts, here’s another possibility you may not have considered. How about the sunshine and blue skies of a Naples, Florida vacation with a GreenLinks Golf Resort rental? These luxury condos are located on the fairway, offering one, two and three bedrooms vacation rentals, and access to a Robert Trent Jones, Sr. signature course or Lee Trevino’s Mustang course.

The opportunities for a golf timeshare vacation, or golf condo rental are excellent and sometimes, the very best part, is that they create time for a family to be together, unplugged from their electronics and in-tune with each other.

Past News from The Timeshare Authority on Timeshares and Golf

• The PGA Tour Stops at One of America’s Favorite Timeshare Vacation Destinations
• Golf and Timeshare Go Together on Every Level
• Marriott Timeshare’s Desert Springs Villas I and Villas II are HOT 100 Properties
• Golf Just Got a Little Sweeter for Marriott Timeshare Owners

After the drama of the Masters last week, the next stop on the PGA Tour is always a much more relaxed venue at Hilton Head Island to play the Verizon Heritage. Harbour Town Links hosts the tournament where players clearly enjoy the friendlier course in direct contrast to the stress and scrutiny that always accompanies playing Augusta National.

When the Tour comes to Hilton Head Island, most players bring their families because they recognize it as a very family-friendly destination and often think of the tournament as a working vacation. Hilton Head Island timeshares, along with a wide selection of golf courses, biking paths, places to sail or kayak, and of course, the beautiful beaches attests to why this location is a favorite destination for so many families.

Harbour Town Yacht Club Timeshares and Timeshare Resales

The timeshares at Harbour Town Yacht Club are an easy walk to the 18th green at Harbour Town Golf Links. Combine that with excellence service, quality amenities, and even the Yacht Club’s 42-foot yacht, “Mystique,” and it is obvious why Harbour Town Yacht Club timeshares are so popular. Vacationing in one of the at the Yacht Club’s 31 private and elegantly appointed timeshare suites means you can take advantage of room service meals, daily maid service, and the full time concierge – now that’s a holiday!

Marriott’s Harbour Club at Harbour Town

Located in Sea Pines Plantation, Marriott’s Harbour Club at Harbour Town timeshares offers luxuriously furnished timeshare villas, that each include two whirlpool tubs, a spacious living and dining area, and a gourmet-equipped kitchen.

Situated to overlook Calibogue Sound, Marriott’s Harbour Club timeshares are an excellent destination whether you want to take in the tournament, play a few holes yourself, or just enjoy the relaxing views of the Harbour Town lighthouse and the yacht basin.

Hilton Head Timeshare Resales and Timeshare Rentals

While everyone might like to own a private vacation home on beautiful Hilton Head Island, with such ownership comes the ongoing expense of upkeep and maintenance, even when you are not there to enjoy your vacation property.

But Hilton Head timeshare resales and timeshare rentals offer a solution that has a much more affordable price and whole lot less headache. After all, why pay for vacation ownership property during the days and nights you aren’t using it? Instead, explore the opportunities in timeshare resales and rentals that mean you can relax on the beach or tee it up where the pros play at prices that don’t have to break the family budget.

Follow these links to learn more about some of the most popular Hilton Head timeshare resales:

• Marriott’s Barony Beach Club Timeshare
• Marriott’s Grande Ocean Timeshare
• Marriott’s Harbour Point Timeshare
• Marriott’s Heritage Club Timeshare
• Marriott’s Monarch At Sea Pines Timeshare
• Marriott’s Sunset Pointe Timeshare
• Player’s Club Timeshare
• Royal Dunes Timeshare