Cruising the courses: golfers now find cruising an attractive alternative to resort vacations - Cruise Guide - escorted golf tours and instruction on cruises - Directory

Cruise Travel, Jan-Feb, 2003 by Jim Kerr

Carnival Cruise Lines, which only put its toe in the water regarding golf a few years ago, now offers a complete golf program on all its 17 ships. They partner with Elite Golf Cruises, a Fort Lauderdale-based golf packager, which offers 40 different golf venues throughout the Caribbean, Mexico, Bahamas, Bermuda, Canada, and Europe. Onboard options--such as lessons, lighted practice cages bolted to the deck, sophisticated simulators, video tracking of your swing, and other novelties to keep die-hard golfers happy--have been installed. Callaway club rentals, shoe rentals, and accessory purchases of golf balls, gloves, and apparel are available onboard for anyone who wants to play once or several times.

Vacation golf has always been costly compared with snorkeling, diving, tennis, and other sports. Although Carnival offers a links experience beginning at $60, it costs $140 a round to play at Cozumel Country Club. And there are ways to spend a lot more, especially if you buy an all-inclusive package that includes both a cruise and golf on several courses. Kalos Golf, a golf tour operator based in North Carolina, charters the tall ships Sea Cloud and Sea Cloud II, plus riverboats River Cloud and River Cloud II, for golf cruises along the French and Italian Riviera, in Spain, Portugal, and Northern Italy, and along the Danube and Rhine rivers. Eleven-day trips offer at least six rounds of golf with sightseeing and other activities for non-golfers. All-inclusive rates vary from trip to trip, but begin at about $4,800 per person. PerryGolf, another luxury golf packager, offers seven-night cruises in 2003 aboard the 122-passenger Clipper Adventurer and 48-passenger Lord of the Glens, with five rounds of golf in Scotland, and an optional three-night stay at Royal St. Georges to attend the British Open. Cost: $5,500 per golfer plus $950 for the British Open option.

While golf charters on smaller ships have been successful, some upscale lines with medium to large ships have replaced outside operators with their own programs. Wide World of Golf, a major international luxury golf tour company based in California, severed a 10-year relationship with Seabourn Cruise Line and Cunard Line at the end of 2001. Although they sold 23 golf cruises aboard eight ships in 2000, the numbers were tapering off.

"The amount of work and costs on our part to set up components of the program became too great for the number of golfers produced, which sometimes numbered four to six on certain cruises," said WWG spokesman Neil Kirsch. Wide World of Golf still organizes luxury, escorted golf tours aboard the new 92-passenger Sun Bay I to Spain and Portugal, with an all-inclusive golf package that adds $1,395 per golfer to the $5,000 fare for an eight-day cruise.

Luxury golf with plenty of pampering still prevails among the high-end lines. Seabourn passengers still play golf, but like many luxury cruise lines, Seabourn has integrated the game into other shipboard activities and shoreside excursions. Silversea Cruises' "Silver Links Golf Series," launched in 1998, offers golf packages aboard select sailings of all of its ships, and a new "Silver Links 365" golf program features golf activities every day of every cruise aboard the Silver Shadow and Silver Whisper. Golf package prices start at $2,050 per guest in addition to the regular cruise fare. Crystal Cruises, which teed off its "Par Excellence" series in 1999, offers more, than a dozen cruises covering more than 30 golf courses around the world this year.