We’ll get you on the right track with newly unveiled short courses and practice areas that hone skills and make practice fun. Check out the “Quick Six” at the Preserve Course, Reynolds Lake Oconee; The Ridge 9 at Hunt Valley CC in Maryland; the Putting Park at Boot Ranch near Fredericksburg, Texas; the 12-hole course and Jim McLean Golf School at Red Ledges in Utah; and the indoor simulators at Golf & Body NYC.

Four Seasons Resort Lanai in Hawaii and The Towers at Pueblo Bonito Pacifica in Los Cabos, Mexico, offer star-gazing packages. In fact, the Los Cabos package includes a personal astronomer. Meanwhile, we’ll be on hand for another type of star-gazing at the AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, keeping tabs on celebrities like Mark Wahlberg, Carson Daly, Josh Duhamel, Chris O’Donnell and Kelly Rohrbach. (We’ll keep a lookout for “Dirty Harry,” too.)

For years, Bob Hyer was an avid golfer always on the lookout to play a course designed by Robert Trent Jones, Jr.

In 2013 Hyer heard about an RTJII course in Eagle Point, Ore. – which Jones designed, built and owned when it opened in 1996. Hyer not only played it, he bought the place.

“There was always something about his courses that felt like a special experience,” said Hyer, a successful financial planner from Vancouver, Wash., and now owner of The Resort at Eagle Point, which he operates with wife Chana, along with Patrick Oropallo, who doubles as head golf pro and general manager, and long-time superintendent Dave Stevens, who worked for Jones building on the course and never left.

The “mom and pop” operation obviously has been doing the right things, with The Resort at Eagle Point being named West Region Course of the Year by the National Golf Course Owners Association.

“The award is very humbling,” said Hyer, who has kept a tight 2-handicap into his 60s. “We are just a little boutique destination in a special place that people from all over the country will want to come.”

The Hyers not only restored the luster to the golf course, they saved Eagle Point before a local bank could close it down. Jones, who was Eagle Point’s original owner, was so thankful that his “orphan course” was rescued, he volunteered to help Hyer – who had zero experience in the golf business – any way he could.

“Bob Hyer is someone who loves the game, and that makes all the difference,” Jones said. “He bought the course because of his love for the game. Success like this, as well as earning recognition by golf course owners from around the county, usually happens for larger companies who control multiple golf courses. This is a marvelous accomplishment. I could not be happier for Bob.”

Jones and Hyer quickly became friends – playing golf together and rafting the nearby Rogue River, for example – and Jones has returned to Oregon to help Hyer with a benefit event for the Eagle Point high school golf program.

“I treasure his friendship,” Hyer said. “Our meeting is all very serendipitous. So many positive things have happened. Because of Bob, I have met people (in golf) that I never would have been able to meet.”

With three new chalets (12 total guestrooms) now in place, along with a new restaurant in the clubhouse, The Resort at Eagle Point now begins a new phase, which Hyer sees as attracting not only golfers, but river rafters, and serving as a retreat for tourists on their way to Crater Lake, or visiting the annual Shakespeare Festival.

“All I ever heard was, ‘Stay away from the golf business,’” Hyer said. “But here, I saw positives when everyone else saw negatives.”

As Jones puts it, “The golf course is back in the hands of a good family.”

LAYTONSVILLE, Md. (Nov. 1, 2017) – Montgomery Country Club, located just north of the metro Washington, D.C. market, has opened a new member restaurant that builds on the history and tradition of the region. Read more…

The Met Golfer June-July 2016 ​

Sometimes, being “behind the scenes” means we are SO far behind that we never get to see even one shot actually struck on the golf course. That certainly was the case at the recent AT&T Pebble Beach Pro-Am, where the HPR crew’s duties running the media   center kept us indoors, providing a large international media contingent with all the tools and facilities they needed to report on a stellar week on the Monterey Peninsula.

How stellar? As Northern California’s own Art Spander summed it up, “Taylor gets ‘magical’ win at Pebble Beach.”

We agree. There is nowhere more magical than the Peninsula and Pebble, and while it’s always a little crazy AT&T week, it was great fun and a chance to show off some of our clients.

For instance, we landed a piece in Golf DigeSTIX about the tournament’s cool new logo, and scored a great vignette on Carmel-by-the-Sea’s Centennial during the CBS telecast, narrated by our friend Dottie Pepper.
 

And yet, despite our “inward focus,” we were able to share the moments of joy felt by victor Vaughn Taylor and his lovely family. It was magical, indeed, and was all we needed to top off a wonderful week.

Howey-in-the-Hills, Fla. (Oct. 20, 2015) – Healthy feet are happy feet, which is why Spa Marbella at Mission Inn Resort & Club is redefining foot care with a host of new services. Read more…

MONTEREY, Calif. (June 2, 2015) – Bryson DeChambeau, the 2011 Player of the Year on the Junior Tour of Northern California sponsored by Capital Insurance Group®, captured the NCAA Division I Men’s Golf Championship individual title Monday.

A junior at Southern Methodist University, DeChambeau, from Clovis, also was named to the PING First-Team All-America team, announced today.

He is the first product of the JTNC to win the NCAA Division I championship and also is SMU's first NCAA men's golf individual national champion, winning at the Concession Golf Club in Bradenton, Fla., with an 8-under par final score of 280.

As a junior golfer, DeChambeau played regularly on the JTNC and has credited that experience for helping him attain a higher level of play, as well as raising the standard of his character.

The SMU co-captain, wearing his trademark Kangol cap, posted four par-or-better rounds at Concession, closing with a 1-under 71 to hold off Cheng-Tsung Pan of Washington, No. 4-ranked amateur player in the world. DeChambeau played the final seven holes 3-under par to nail down the one-shot victory.

Beginning in 2011, CIG helped establish the JTNC when the Northern California Golf Association and the Northern California PGA combined resources, creating a single tour where junior golfers could compete against the best players for an affordable price. This partnership proved extremely successful.

Now in its fifth year, the JTNC scheduled 26 tournaments in 2015, from March through December. The quality of these tournaments has been recognized the American Junior Golf Association by awarding performance based entry status to the winners of all Boys and Girls Championship flight events in 2015.