Sea Island, Georgia
Every golfer—from the tour pro to the 20-handicap duffer—wants to play better. And few places are better suited to combining world-class improvement with a luxury vacation than Sea Island, Georgia. It’s the only golf resort with two five-star hotels—the Lodge and the Cloisters—along with a five-star spa and restaurant, the Georgian Room. But the venerable 90-year-old resort, host to a G-8 Summit, countless U.S. presidents as well as royalty, is not resting on its plush laurels. The current owner Philip Anschutz has been pouring money into enhancements, especially the resort’s prodigious golf offerings.
Home to the RSM Classic, a PGA Tour event, Sea Island has three marquee courses. Of them, Seaside is perennially ranked in the nation’s Top 100; Plantation was just completely redone by golfer/designer/resident Davis Love III with his brother Mark; and Retreat was redesigned by the Loves in 2001.
The Lodge just got $25 million in improvements. Six lavish two- to four-bedroom golf cottages were added, surrounding a new oceanfront pool. Next to this, the Loves added an 18-hole, grass putting course. The heralded golf performance center was turned into a seventh new lodging, the giant four-bedroom “King Cottage,” boasting its own indoor/outdoor hitting bay and private driving range.
With the building turned into lodging, they built an all-new, bigger-and-better Performance Center next door, with nothing held back. The 17,000-square-foot facility boasts state-of-the-art technology and offers many of the game’s top instructors. The Performance Center boasts its own resident sports psychologist. The putting guru Phil Kenyon replicated his custom studio in England here, with a putting lab that includes a synthetic green that changes contour to replicate thousands of different breaks, slopes and angles. With digital cameras that capture data from every angle, it is the most advanced putting analyzer, simulator and fitting device in the country.
The new facility has six large instructional and club-fitting bays. Each is equipped with next-generation Trackman launch monitors and simulators used in indoor, outdoor or combination sessions. In essence, it has everything you need to get dialed in from swing to mind to body.
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