Fort Wayne, IN, located in the Northeast corner of the state, doesn't really get a great amount of snow (34 inches on average) but the temperatures can get very cold (all-time low of -22 degrees on January 20, 1985). If we are extremely lucky, we might get to play a round of golf the last week of February and we may even get to play into December.

But all-in-all, the season lasts from mid-March to late November.

That's why it's always nice to get a jump on the golf season by taking a late winter trip south.

The boys from Coyote Creek Golf Club did just that. We all headed south in February but not all together. Tim Ormsby has a winter place in Fort Myers. Alan Buck has a winter place in the Seminole, FL area. Dan Kumfer and wife Cheryl spend a few months each winter in the St. Pete area. Ken Nicholas has family in Orlando and Mike Myers has family in the Naples area. Bill Weber and wife rented a condo just north of St. Pete at Indian Rocks Beach. Steve Ramp and wife Jane moved to Cape Coral.

​And Jimmy Sprandel, Denny (Taco) Stonebraker and I rented a condo at Indian Rocks Beach. The plan was to play four or five rounds of golf on the way down before settling into the condo.

We left Fort Wayne on a Sunday and settled into our hotel in Prattville, AL just north of Montgomery before the sun set. We would play two courses on the Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail before turning east into Florida.

The Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail is a collection of championship golf courses across the state of Alabama designed by Robert Trent Jones, Sr. The courses are investments by the Retirement Systems of Alabama to help the state economically. It started with eight sites with 378 holes and now consists of 11 sites with 468 holes. Economically speaking, many restaurants and hotels have sprung up around every site and it is clear this concept has greatly aided the state in terms of jobs and revenue.

Our first round was at Capitol Hill. There are three 18 hole courses at the site and we played the Legislator Course. The weather was perfect...mid-60's

A trip south the first two weeks of April provided the opportunity for me to play a dozen new (to me) golf courses including two former Top 100 courses. More on that below. But first, I want to share a situation you may have faced during your vacation travels.

Every now and then when you rent a condo for a week on the beach, you get a stinker. It might be several years older than depicted in pictures or it may not be clean. During our recent trip to Orange Beach, AL, we settled into a condo that was in a word, filthy! It was the week after Spring Break and that was part of the problem. It's rare that the situation is rectified to the renter's satisfaction but in our case, Prickett Properties went WAY above and beyond by upgrading us from a dilapidated three bedroom, three bath unit to a nearly new four bedroom, five bath unit with stunning vistas. And Kevin, our representative even helped us move to the new unit at 9 o'clock on a Sunday evening! Talk about above and beyond!! We will certainly be working with Prickett Properties in the future.

When my family returned north to Indiana at the end of the week for work and school, I headed east and south to Florida where I had a reunion of sorts with friends Steve and Jane Ramp and Barry Cohen in Cape Coral, FL. Steve and Jane never disappoint as hosts and as usual, the golf was good, the food and beverage even better, and the company perfect. On this leg of the trip, I added Pebble Creek Golf Club in Tampa, FL on Sunday, and University Park Country Club in University Park, FL and Calusa Lakes Golf Club in Nokomis, FL on Monday.

The Golf Club at Magnolia Landing and Herons Glen Golf and Country Club, both in North Fort Myers, FL were played on Tuesday and Panther Run Golf Club in Ave Maria, FL was played on Wednesday. 

Just one comment about these three courses. For each course, there were times when the distance from the previous green to the next tee was not conducive to maintaining a pace of play. You would never be permitted to walk any of these courses. Each of these courses had at least one trek of a half-mile!

On Thursday morning, I headed to Orlando, FL where I played the New Course at Grand Cypress, Jack Nicklaus' homage to The Old Course at St, Andrews. Opened in 1988, the New Course was a staple on Golf Magazine's Top 100 Courses You Can Play list until its last appearance at 99 on the 2004 list.

Frankly, I am not sure why it is no longer on the list. I enjoyed the course greatly. It is a Scottish links style course with seven double greens, stone bridges and walls, a burn, grassy mounds, and over 150 bunkers, many of the pot variety. And the 18th hole has its own "Valley of Sin" just like The Old Course. The greens are severely undulating which places a higher premium on approach shots to assure the putt is from the correct level of the green. And I never saw a white stake the entire round.

I can't recommend this course enough...generous landing areas off the tee, excellent course maintenance, and a variety of tee choices. If you are in Orlando with your golf clubs, play this course! I booked my tee time the day before on GolfNow and encountered a relatively uncrowded course on a Thursday afternoon.

From Orlando, I headed north to Jacksonville, FL where I spent the night. I would be playing the East/West course at Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach Friday morning.

Sawgrass East/West left Golf Magazine's Top 100 You Can Play list after 2000 when it became a private course. It took a little bit of work to score a round on this course and I am indebted to Bill Blumenhurst, my PGA Professional in Fort Wayne at Coyote Creek Golf Club and Michael Broderick, the PGA Professional at Sawgrass East/West for working together to arrange my round.

It was overcast with showers in the forecast as I was met by my forecaddie for the day, Don Cross. Don has caddied all over the US and has a second job as a production manager for The Golf Channel. Don had some stories! He's worked with many professional golfers including Jack Nicklaus, Gary Player, and Arnold Palmer. And of course, he knows many of the personalities on Morning Drive, past and present. We had quite a good conversation about many of the golf courses in the US and he shared the names of some of the courses I need to play.

Sawgrass East/West is an original Ed Seay design that has been softened quite a bit from its halcyon days as the venue for The Player's Championship from 1977 to 1981. It sits no more than a good driver away from the Atlantic and as a result, is quite often buffeted by the ocean winds. The original site was once a swamp that could not be walked without snake boots. The tour players found it extremely difficult as there was rarely a day when the tournament was played in March that the wind did not blow. The club's website has a quote from an article written by Sports Illustrated's Dan Jenkins who wrote that it was a "swampy, scrubby, windy, chilly, narrow pain in the three-wood" and where " a man is lucky to make pars." The club's website also reports the following: "Golfer John Schlee said, "If this was an airport it would be closed." In one round, the field averaged 79.5 strokes prompting a locker room scene where the players took over barber Paul Mahia's chair and, as each player came off the course, he had to sit in the chair and be grilled by the others. The horror stories were, indeed, horrible, and it made Sawgrass an internationally famous name."

The winners of the five Tour Championships held at the East/West course were Mark Hayes, Jack Nicklaus, Lanny Wadkins, Lee Trevino, and Ray Floyd...not a chump in the bunch!

I did not find the course to be a big burden although the winds were not unmanageable when I played. And I had a wind from the north when it was howling. The rains finally came as I completed my 15th hole, a par 3 on the West nine and Don and I were able to wait out the squall under an awning at the restroom between 15 and 16.

I will say it's definitely another course on the list worth playing. It shouldn't beat you up and it has a great history.

After the round, I headed to Hickory, NC where I played Ole Still Golf Club Saturday morning. Ole Still is certainly the hilliest course I played on the trip. Upon completion, I drove 630 miles back to Fort Wayne.

So I have now played 176 of the 207 courses that have been on at least one of Golf Magazine's Top 100 Courses You Can Play lists (and 11 of the 13 Florida courses). And my overall number for unique courses I've now played is 955. 1000 is now in play, likely in late summer.

From a logo ball standpoint, only the first course I played, King's Creek, did not have logo balls on hand.

I just returned from a one month road trip that took me from Ft. Wayne, IN to San Diego, CA and back in nineteen days and after two days to regroup, another eight days away from home to Orange Beach, AL and back (with a quick stop in St. Francisville, LA). This was preceded by three days of volunteering at the Hotel Fitness Championship, the Web.com Tour's first 2014 playoff tournament, at Sycamore Hills Golf Club in Ft. Wayne.

I'm whooped! I think I know how Odysseus felt, though his trip was a bit longer and with more peril.

I played twenty-four rounds of golf in the first fourteen days, attended a four day Travel Writer's/Blogger's Conference in San Diego, drove back to Ft. Wayne in forty-six hours (with overnight stops in Phoenix and Oklahoma City), recovered for two days, traveled to St. Francisville, LA for another round of golf before resting on the beautiful beaches of the Alabama Gulf Coast for seven days followed by another fourteen hour drive back home.

This was the most complex trip I've ever planned. But I love when a plan comes together!

Here's a brief recap.

Beginning on Monday, August 25, I volunteered for three days at the Web.com Tour's Hotel Fitness Championship. This was the tour's first 2014 playoff/elimination tournament to determine which golfers earn status on the PGA Tour for 2015. I was a part of the Shuttles Team and my job was to shuttle the golfers and caddies from the Sycamore Hills clubhouse to the driving range and back. I had the early morning shift each day.

I left Ft. Wayne at 4:00 A.M. on Thursday, August 28. My first stop was in Broken Arrow, OK where I played Forest Ridges Golf Club. It just so happened Broken Arrow was about twelve hours from Ft. Wayne and a good point to stop driving a car and start driving a golf ball.

After a night in Oklahoma, I ventured south to Texas where I played in Nocona, TX and Runaway Bay, TX before making Horseshoe Bay Resort, just west of Austin, TX my playground for two days. Two of the courses at this resort are a part of my Quest.

After a Sunday morning round at the resort, I drove ten hours to Albuquerque, NM where I spent the night. The University of New Mexico Golf Course, which I played Labor Day morning, is another course that's a part of my Quest. Playing early morning, I was surprised to see a pack of Mexican Gray wolves. The wolf is commonly referred to as "El lobo" and is the mascot of the University of New Mexico.