The Gulf Coast Golf Guide

What happens in Vegas may stay in Vegas, but at Beau Rivage Resort & Casino in Biloxi, Mississippi, you’ll be talking about your golf trip for years to come. This region has all the ingredients for the golf getaway of a lifetime: great beaches, great gaming and great golf. Better yet, you get the Vegas experience at a much better value.

Guests of Beau Rivage can play the award-winning Fallen Oak with its monster 604-yard hole. This Tom Fazio design that winds through pecan orchards, oaks and magnolia groves has been heralded as one of the two best casino courses in the country. MGM Mirage, which operates 17 resorts including Bellagio and Mandalay Bay, has only two golf courses (the other is Shadow Creek in Las Vegas). They have made sure both are spectacular. Fallen Oak is located just 15 minutes from the resort, but its location bordering a national forest, feels like a million miles away. Fazio personally selected this naturally beautiful piece of property for the golf course.

It’s no secret that Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Shore in 2005, but what hasn’t been as widely publicized is that Biloxi has come back even better than before. There are more casinos, more golf courses and more flights in and out of the city. Beau Rivage spent $550 million to totally redo its resort.

With 1,740 guest rooms and suites, a redesigned casino floor, 12 restaurants, four lounges and bars, 12 retail venues, spa and salon, pool and convention center, the resort is both the tallest and biggest building in Mississippi. Dubbed the “Bellagio of the South,” the AAA Four-Diamond resort features a lineup of headline acts in its theater. This fall’s lineup includes Bill Cosby, B.B. King, Howie Mandel and Wayne Newton.

If like many golfers, fishing is also your passion, the fertile waters of the Gulf make this one of the top sport fishing spots in the world. Biloxi has numerous charter boats that can get you to the best fishing grounds along the coast or out into the deep waters.

GLENLAKES
» Weeki Wachee, Florida
GlenLakes.com, 800-222-9003

Surrounded by 85,000 acres of nature preserve and the sleepy little town of Weeki Wachee, the private golf community of GlenLakes enjoys an idyllic setting on the west coast of Florida about an hour north of Tampa. The clear spring waters of the Weeki Wachee River are nearby, as are the beaches of the Gulf. Life is good here. A 35,000-square-foot, clubhouse with pool, tennis courts, fitness room, restaurants and a full calendar of activities give residents plenty to keep them active, even while the community’s 1,400 secluded acres feels far from the hustle and bustle of city life.

For golfers, membership is available in a beautifully manicured Ron Garl-designed championship course framed by mature pines and oak. This summer, residents found more reason not to wander far from home as a shopping center with a grocery store and pharmacy opened on the adjacent property.  Both maintenance-free homes (starting in the $240s excluding homesite) and custom estate homes (starting at the $300s excluding homesite) are available on golf course, lakefront and wooded views homesites.