The Best of Desert Golf - Five Courses for Golf Vacations

Tropical paradises can sure be overrated sometimes! In the warmer months your golf often gets rained out, and you have to cover yourself in insect repellant every day or be eaten alive on the golf course. If you have always been the steadier, hardier sort, then a golf vacation to the desert can hold some surprising gems. From the beautiful courses of Cabo San Jose in Mexico, to Nevada and Arizona's championship offerings, we are looking five of the best golf courses that call the American desert home.

Cabo Del Sol - Desert

This course is designed by the prolific Tom Weiskopf, and is nestled among the six other championship courses in Cabo San Lucas. There are five sets of tees which mean the course varies in length from 5,300 to 7,100 yards, and the design takes advantage of desert landscape features like natural river washes, rolling dunes and startling red sandy bunkers. It is in the desert, but you can see the ocean wherever you look from most holes.

Palmilla

Another of Cabo San Lucas' gorgeous offerings, Palmilla is a Jack-Nicklaus-designed course that was handpicked for its gorgeous scenery by the golf master. For a free and easy golf vacation with just a little bite in your course, Palmilla is a must play. It has a slope of 139.

Omni Tucson - Catalina

Formerly known as the Orange/Gold course, the Omni Tuscon was designed by Robert Bruce Harris and has gorgeous desert mountain views of the middle of Arizona. There are ten sparkling lakes to give the desert setting a bit of refreshment. Why not make your next golf vacation at the standard PGA tour stop in Arizona?

TPC at the Canyons

Vegas is known for slot holes ... but not ordinarily round holes with golf balls in them! The TPC at the Canyons course is a notable exception, designed by Bobby Weed and Raymond Floyd and host to the Senior PGA Touras well as the Invensys Classic. The course flows through canyons and arroyos, and there is nothing but clear blue sky and a comfy dry warmth for most of the year.

The Chase at PGA Golf Club Coyote Springs

Jack Nicklaus has a series of golf courses planned to flow throughout the Coyote Springs community. This course is the first one in the series, and is located between Mesquite and Vegas. It is a par 72, and the forward tees take off around 2,000 yards from the back tees, which set the course at 7,471 yards. There are 11 lakes on the course, so hone your water-avoidance skills on your next golf vacation!

Golf Vacations -- Five Challenging Courses

Being challenged doesn't always feel nice at the time. We're human … we want to win, we want to be the best, and we don’t want to know how far we still have to go before we're perfect! Yet being challenged is how we learn … so today for golf vacationers, we are looking at some of the golf courses worldwide that offer you the best opportunities for learning. From the Dominican Republic to Dunbar and back, here are the best of the hardest.

1. Cocotal -- Dominican Republic

This course for golf vacationers follows the lay of the land, using naturally placed trees and mounds in the midst of rolling terrain. An unceasing wind is what makes the course so challenging -- if you want to learn how to compensate for wind, from every angle, at every speed and on all different terrains, Cocotal is the place to do it!

2. Daytona Beach Golf Course

Aside from having a designer with an awesome name (Slim Deathridge), the Daytona Beach Golf Club also presents several challenges, even for experienced golfers. Dense stands of Florida pines and oaks punctuate the course as well as providing beautiful scenery, and the redesign of the course in 1997 added extra water and more undulations in the territory.

3. St George Golf Club, Utah

This is quite a long golf course, and needs a fair bit of walking mixed with your hits. All that aerobic exercise can be a challenge in itself! Golf-wise, though, there are some par 3's over water, and a peninsula on a par 5 hole to worry about. The peninsula holds both the 9th and 18th hole greens, and where many people on golf vacations will instinctively choose a short-iron here, you really need a club that will give you best accuracy and distance control.

4. Dunbar East Links

If you've come all the way to Scotland on a golf vacation, you may as well see what it can throw at you! The terrain here is coastal, so wind is an enormous factor in play. Different days require completely different tactics.

5. Desert Dunes, California

A day at Desert Dunes certainly isn’t a walk in the park … it is golfing equivalent of boot camp, with grumpy instructors throwing push-ups, mud traps and high walls at you new recruits! A great way to improve your game on a golf vacation is to master the tight fairways, sloped greens and water hazards of this southern California course.