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

Titleist

Michael Sim (right), who in 2009 won the Nationwide Tour money title and Player of the Year award, as well as a battlefield promotion to the PGA Tour, spent some time at the Acushnet Test Facility before the start of last week’s Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines.

According to Titleist’s Blog, Sim felt that the distance gap between his AP2 9-iron and his pitching wedge was too large, so he sought the help of some Titleist fitters. By switching from a 47° Vokey Design Spin Milled C-C to a club with 48°, the gap shrank from 18 yards to 12 yards.

Sim also told fitters that while his 695CB 2-iron worked well on the sandy, dry courses in his homeland of Australia, PGA Tour courses demanded shots that fly higher and stop quickly. After trying various hybrids, he put a prototype 503i with a Project X 6.5 shaft into his bag and took out the 2-iron.

Sim also asked Titleist reps to look at his putting stroke using the company’s high speed cameras at the Scotty Cameron putting studio. “It wasn’t as good as what it was last year when I went in there,” he told Titleist. “But we managed to correct that in probably 20 minutes.”

Sim finished tied for second at Torrey Pines. Here is a complete list of his clubs:
DRIVER: Titleist 905R (8.5°) with a Mitsubishi Diamana White 83 shaft

FAIRWAY WOOD: Titleist 909F2 (13.5°) with a Mitsubishi Diamana Blue 93 shaft

HYBRID: Titleist 503i with True Temper Project X shafts

IRONS: Titleist AP2 (3-9) with True Temper Project X shafts

WEDGES: Titleist Vokey Design Spin Milled C-C (48°, 54°, 60°) with True Temper Project X shafts

PUTTER: Scotty Cameron for Titleist Newport Squareback
BALL: Titleist Pro V1x

TaylorMade

You’ve had a chance to read all about TaylorMade’s newest drivers, the R9 SuperTri and the Burner SuperFast. Last week at Torrey Pines, PGA Tour pros had their first chance to hit the clubs on the range. The video below, provided by TaylorMade, shows some of their reactions:

Ping
There has been a lot of talk about Ping Eye2 wedges recently, especially after John Daly and Phil Mickelson used the venerable clubs in PGA Tour events. The grooves on the Eye2 wedges would be non-conforming with the USGA’s new rules, except they were grandfathered to be legal in perpetuity thanks to a lawsuit Ping won 20 years ago. However, Ping cannot make more Eye2 irons and wedges with the old grooves, but on eBay the clubs are selling like hotcakes.

What was interesting to see at the Farmers Insurance Open was that there were 24 sets of Ping irons in play. Twelve sets were used by Ping staff players, and 12 were used by players NOT on Ping’s staff, including K.J. Choi (right) who used a set of the company’s new G15 irons. Choi, who is no longer a Nike staff player, also played with a TaylorMade r7 Limited driver.

Callaway
According to the company, Spain’s Alvaro Quiros switched to Callaway’s new Tour i(z) ball at last week’s European Tour event in Qatar, where he finished second behind Robert Karrlson. Callaway officials pointed out that the switch may have helped the longest hitter in Europe get a touch longer off the tee. Quiros averaged  317 yards per drive at this year’s Qatar Masters; at the same event last season, he averaged 314 yards on his way to victory.

See-Try-Buy: Learn more about Callaway, Ping, TaylorMade and Titleist clubs, and schedule your fitting with GolfTec.

Related: Follow David Dusek on Twitter

(Photos: Sim/Lenny Ignelzi/AP Photos; Choi/Sam Greenwood/Getty Images)