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.