If you want to experience PGA
Tour-grade pressure, enter a pro-am.
If you want to indulge in Tour-caliber
pampering, visit Reynolds Plantation
in Greensboro, Ga., and treat yourself to
the Tour Experience at the Kingdom,
a TaylorMade-run orgy of clubfitting,
instruction and mingling with A-list pros.

If it sounds pricey, that’s because it
is—nearly $9,000 for three days (for less
lavish options, see below). But this is the
Vatican for gear geeks, offering access to
the game’s most advanced swing-analysis
and custom-fitting technology.

The fitting process begins with you
rigged head to toe in reflective markers that
allow nine high-speed cameras to capture
your every movement. The result is a
3-D rendering of your swing and putting
stroke that is at once enlightening and
alarming. Those metrics are married to the
stats gathered during an extensive hitting
session, and club by club, your dream set
materializes, with shaft flexes, lofts and lie
angles handpicked for your swing.

The coolest perk comes after the fitting.
You’ll have dinner with a TaylorMade
pro—Sean O’Hair, say, or Corey Pavin—retire to your room at the Ritz, then wake
up to play 18 holes with your spanking-new
clubs, built overnight by technicians.
Now that’s the Tour life we could all enjoy.

The Kingdom Experience
• 3 nights at the Ritz-Carlton Lodge
• An expert 14-club fitting via MATT
(Motion Analysis Technology by TaylorMade)
• A custom set built on-site and
overnight by TaylorMade technicians
• Mingling, playing and dining with a
TaylorMade Tour pro
• Full-swing and short-game instruction
by Top 100 Teacher Charlie King
• 18 holes with your new sticks
• A Tour bag, Adidas clothing, shoes,
and other goodies

Fittings Without the Frills
Humbler fitting options are also available,
starting at $100 for a single-club session
(driver, putter, etc.). You’ll still enjoy
all the benefits of motion-capture
technology, but you’ll demo fewer
sticks than you would during a Kingdom
session. The Kingdom itself also offers
less elaborate fittings, ranging from $695
for a single club to $4,095 for a full set, a
night at the Ritz and a round of golf. The
downside: You won’t get to talk golf with
Hale Irwin over Carolina mountain trout.

Where You’ll Play
The five excellent public courses at
Reynolds Plantation force golfers to make
some tough scheduling calls. The most
critically acclaimed of the quintet is Jack Nicklaus’s Great Waters (No. 42 on
our Top 100 You Can Play list), with Rees Jones’s Oconee Course (No. 58) close
behind. The front side of Great Waters
snakes through towering dogwoods, while
six holes on the back skirt Lake Oconee.
The Oconee, built in 2002, is the newest of
Reynolds’ public tracks (a private course,
the Creek Club by Jim Engh, opened in ’07).
Its finishing kick, Nos. 14-18, may be the
best five-hole stretch on the complex. For
now, anyway—a seventh course, a private
routing by Pete Dye, is underway.

Where You’ll Stay
Most guests bunk at the Ritz-Carlton
Lodge, a sumptuous retreat on the
shore of Lake Oconee. The 251-room hotel
offers all you’d expect from a Ritz (private
terraces and 400-thread-count linens)
and a couple of things you might not (a
car-detailing service and a separate 5,400-
square-foot house where two U.S. presidents
have slept; it starts at $2,500/night). The six
cozy golf cottages are also a great option.

What You’ll Pay
The Oconee Course $155-$265
Great Waters Course $135-$205
(closed for remodeling until April)
Plantation Course $115-$175
The National Course $115-$175
The Landing Course $105-$145
Ritz-Carlton Lodge From $239/night
Lakeside Cottages From $759/night

Info 888-298-3119; reynoldsplantation.com

NAPLES, Fl. — The Champions Tour is the hot tour at the moment, with Tiger Woods out of commission, Alex Cejka leading Pebble Beach and Tom Watson conjuring serious discussion about whether a 60-year-old legend with an artificial hip could add something to Corey Pavin’s Ryder Cup team. Even without Pavin or Watson in the field, there’s star power in almost every threesome out at the wind-blown Quarry, another of those gated Florida developments caught in the middle of a recession with lots to sell and senior golf as its vehicle. Freddie Couples added the ACE Group Classic to his schedule and Paul Azinger is making his debut, but the story of Friday’s first full field event of the season was the miracle of modern medicine and the tenacity of Fred Funk and Tom Kite.

Funk was playing his first tournament round with an artificial knee that was bolted into his right leg last November 16. Twelve days before Funk’s operation, Kite had major surgery on his right shoulder. These are two of the hardest grinders in their sport since the 80s, so it’s no wonder they were both two-under par when play was literally blown dead by 40 MPH gusts.

They both started by making 3 at the par-4 first, but Kite kept going, with birdies on three of his first four holes. He felt like quitting right there, because he knows the rest of the year could never get better — or could it? That’s why they keep playing in this league, because there is hope that it could get better. “The round so far is surprising the heck out of me,” Kite said, back at his hotel room Friday afternoon. “I have no reason to even think that I could be doing anything good at all.”

Kite was in Birmingham, Al., three days after the Charles Schwab Cup, in surgery with Dr. James Andrews, the famed orthopedic surgeon. There was a bicep tendon attached to his shoulder that needed repair and hurt Kite on every follow through. After Andrews did his work, Kite had to do his in rehabilitation, back home in Austin.

“They said it would be very difficult and the pain was going to be more than I ever experienced,” Kite said. “I was trying to prepare for it, but there was nothing to prepare for what I went through. But in everything I read about players from various sports who came back from injuries quickly, they all talked about how hard they rehabbed it.”

There is a four-page story in this week’s Golf World about how hard Funk worked in the off-season to be ready for 2010, so it was no surprise that he spent the time between when players were brought off the course Friday and when play was finally suspended, in the tour’s workout trailer — riding an exercise bike.

In recent practice rounds leading up to the tournament, both at The Fox Club on Monday in Stuart and again in Naples, close friend Mike Goodes had to keep reminding Funk to stay patient. That was Funk’s mantra when I talked to him in Ponte Vedra, Fl, while reporting the piece for Golf World; he was going to take his time and build up to the heart of the season, when the senior majors begin in May. But typical of Funk, he wasn’t waiting. He was -4 at the writing of this column on Saturday, tied with Couples and Tommy Armour III for the lead.

The spirit of the competition is what drives them. That and the fact that with Couples, Pavin and Armour coming out this year, it’s going to be harder and harder to stay competitive: Guys like Kite and Funk, along with Jay Haas and Loren Roberts, want to keep putting themselves in position to win while they can.

Dana Quigley, the Champions Tour Player of the Year in 2005, told me Friday on the 16th tee Friday that he could see the difference the last two years. Quigley used to get the first tee time when he segued from the club pro ranks, now he’s getting the first tee time again.

“It’s an interesting deal,” Kite said. “In all the other sports you’re done so early compared to golf, so we’re able to keep this competitiveness within a sport going so long. To some extent it’s pretty difficult to give up. I know some people can walk away from it, like Johnny Miller, Nick Faldo. But in the other sports, you’re kind of forced out. With this one, especially with the Champions Tour, you’re not forced out. You can stay competitive, if you love playing the game.”

Kite and Funk obviously love it. So does Watson to keep going on his artificial hip and even a Joey Sindelar, who exited the Charles Schwab Cup with a pulmonary embolism and was back Friday at one under, and this is leaving out Armour, who had back surgery last June and didn’t crack the top-65 after returning in August, and Peter Jacobsen, who has a fake hip and knee. This is a circuit where if you’re not playing hurt, you’re not playing at all.