The tournament will be contested on Waikoloa’s legendary Kings’ Course, a collaboration of Jay Morrish and Tom Weiskopf, which contains design elements reminiscent of a Scottish links course while simultaneously offering amazing views of Big Island volcanoes, wildflowers and towering palm trees. Golfers always enjoy the Scottish-style double green shared by the third and sixth holes. On the free day, competitors can also tee it up on the sister Beach Course, which hugs the water and was literally carved from the lava flow along the picturesque Wailulua Bay. Its signature is the par-5 12th, bordering the ocean from tee to green. Perhaps the biggest challenge is not being distracted by the frolicking humpback whales.

As diverse as its courses are the Waikoloa lodging options—which include the Waikoloa Beach Marriott and the Hilton Waikoloa Village, as well as no less than a half dozen luxurious condominium properties—all with wonderful views and comfortable furnishings. More than a few golfers have paid a first-time visit, fell in love with every aspect of this gorgeous 1,350-acre master-planned residential resort community and ended up buying a vacation home before they left.

(Sometimes it helps to feel as if your left shoulder is pointing toward the ground.) Amateurs often tilt their left shoulder upward, as if they were playing a full shot, which causes the club-head to bot­tom out behind the ball and hit it fat or thin. Place the ball slightly back in your stance and shift your weight to your left side. This will promote a steeper, more descending down­swing and the proper ball-turf contact for a solid shot.

Good chipping  and pitching is all about distance control. If the ball stops within a yard or two of the hole, you can expect to one-putt more. This drill is one of my favorites. Chip one ball about three yards, then pitch your next shot so it lands on top of the first ball and rolls beyond it. Try to land the third ball on top of the second and so on.

The object is to finish with a fairly straight line of evenly spaced balls. This drill improves your hand-eye coordination and teaches you how to incrementally increase the dis­tance you carry—or fly—the ball. It also improves your ability to judge early, which is essential to chipping and pitching as you move farther away from the green.

Low, Running Chip

A back pin location with plenty of green to work with, or a flat run-up to the green. With these shots, I use a less-lofted club (my gap wedge; amateurs might consider using an 8- or 9-iron) because I want to keep the ball low to the ground. Play the ball back in your stance, in line with the big toe on your right foot.

This positions your hands in front of the ball, reducing the club’s loft even more. Keep your left wrist firm and swing the club- head down and through the ball. Make sure you take a big enough back swing to get the ball to the hole.

Short Pitch

This is the shot to hit if you don’t want the ball to run too much and you need. ‘to carry an obstacle. Center the ball between your feet and dis­tribute your weight equally. Your hands should be even with the ball and the shaft perpendicular to the ground.

You don’t want the shaft leaning forward in this shot because that delofts the club, and you need maximum loft. As you swing back and through, try to keep the shaft pointing at your belly. This will encourage you to hit the ball with the club’s full loft, producing a higher shot with less roll

Downhill Floater

This is a tough shot, especially if the green is running away from you and you’re hitting out of the rough. To pop the ball out softly, play it back in your stance with your weight favoring your left side and knees bent.

Using your most-lofted wedge, open the clubface slightly and swing the club-head down the slope past your left foot, keeping the face pointing toward the sky. Allow your knees to give a little and chase the slope with the club as you follow through; otherwise, you’ll hit up on the ball and skull it.

Try Up : For Left Hand Player.

Players often try to add loft to their chips by scooping with their right hand, which results in poor contact. Practice hitting chip shots with your left arm only. With no interference from your right hand, you’ll find it easier to keep your left wrist firm and make solid contact. Feel as if you’re swinging the handle of the club and brush the turf in front of the ball.

As Seymour tells her story, she is sitting in the spacious bathroom of her Malibu, Calif., home while a hairstylist and makeup artist fuss over her for a photo shoot. At 56, even in a pink robe and curlers, she has glamor to spare. Fine-boned and elegant, with long auburn hair and an unreduced face (yes, those are wrinkles, a sight rarely seen in Hollywood), she has a mature, self-assured beauty that served her well as the lusty politician’s wife in Wedding Crashers, the 2005 hit film that convinced Hollywood she could do comedy. Seymour remains every inch the former ballerina who dreamed of dancing with Russia’s Kirov Ballet before a knee injury redirected her into acting. With her clipped, precise speech and brisk manner, she could be the dance mistress put­ting her class through its paces at the barre.

Seymour and her husband, pro­ducer/director James Keach, are members of Sherwood Country Club in Thousand Oaks, Calif., home to two Jack Nicklaus layouts, one full-length course and one par 3. In 2006 the 18- hole course was closed for renovations, so every day for two months, Seymour played the par-3 course to prepare for the Wales tournament. Sometimes she had an instructor, but often she was alone.”There were two other people on the course: Bruce Jenner and Kenny G. The two obsessed golfers in our club and me. That course is so precise and small that you’re in all kinds of trouble if you don’t go straight. So I got really good at chipping and putting. And it paid off.”

The Northern Rock All-Star Cup was played in a Ryder Cup format: match play, best ball, and alternate shot. Each side had 11 celebrities, including British TV star Bruce Forsyth and model Jodie Kidd for Team Europe, and Kenny G, Meat Loaf, Alice Cooper and Seymour for Team USA. The Americans lost, but Seymour never gave up. On the final hole of the tour­nament, her partner, actor Aidan Quinn, hit the ball into a greenside bunker. It was her job to get out.

“There were huge crowds, it was the end of the day, the cameras were there, and I’m thinking, ‘Oh, this is impossible.’ I got down in the sand and I couldn’t even see the flag. I chipped the ball up, and then all of a sudden everyone starts roaring and I jumped up and the ball rolled, slowly but surely, right into the hole. The entire place went crazy. It was one of the greatest days of my life.”

Seymour has had a rich and varied life, but not every day has been as triumphant. Yet, like one of the indomitable heroines she’s known for, she approaches life’s challenges the same way she approaches golf: Accentuate the positive. In golf, Seymour rarely keeps score, preferring a system of her own invention.”When I hit a ball and it goes where I intended it to, I give myself a star. Because at least at the end of the day I can say that I had six shots that I felt really proud of.”

Seymour began life as Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenburg, the first of three daughters born to an English gynecologist and his Dutch wife. After her dance career was cut short at 17, she turned to act­ing. In 1973 she found fame playing Solitaire in Live and Let Die. While her cinematic career has been notable—Somewhere in Time, in which she starred opposite her good friend the late Christopher Reeve, has become a romantic classic—she is best known for her television work. Her made-for-TV films range from melodramas (Obsessed With a Married Woman) to prestigious miniseries (War and Remembrance and Onassis: The Richest Man in the World, for which her portrayal of Maria Callas earned her an Emmy). By the late ’80s, she’d been married three times and had two children, Katie and Sean, by her third husband, David Flynn, from whom she was later, divorced.

In 1990 she was on location in Scottsdale making Sunstroke for the USA Network. Her director, James Keach, a passionate golfer, invited her to play. “She did great,” Keach recalls, sitting at the kitchen table while waiting for their 11-year-old twins, John and Kris, to get ready for Little League. ‘And she was fun to look at standing over the ball.”

“I was very concerned about running into a snake,” Seymour says. “But every once in a while I’d get that ping, and that would make me feel, ‘Oh my gosh, I can do this, I want to do this.’”

In 1993 Seymour took the role that made her a household name: Michaela Quinn, the 19th-century pioneer doctor in Colorado who dispenses country medicine and feminist bromides in equal measure. She and Keach married that same year. At 43, Seymour began undergoing fertility treatments, and after two failed pregnancies, she gave birth to Kris and John in 1995. Three years later, when CBS canceled her series, she decided to do what many actresses of a certain age do (think ElizabethTaylor and Susan Lucci): lever­age her famous name into a business.

Seymour has always had a knack for design. In the 1960s, while still in high school, she started a small business embroidering see-through blouses for a London department store. In 2003 she launched the Jane Seymour Home Collection for Saks, Inc., and now owns the line through The Sommerset Group, her Birmingham, Alabama-based company. Her latest book, Making Yourself at Home, was pub­lished in April. This fall, the Jane Seymour Home Collection, her line of linens, pillows and candles sold on janeseyrnourhome.com, debuts in The Great Indoors, a Sears-owned chain.

Seymour and Keach’s other home is St. Catherine’s Court, a 1,000-year-old former monastery located on 15 acres near Bath, England.They have painstakingly restored and updated the home and rent it out most  of the year for $56,000 a week. NewYork Yankees superstar Alex Rodriguez, whom Seymour and Keach met at a baseball game, has spent time there with his wife. “He asked me, ‘Where’s the gym?’” Seymour recalls. “I said, ‘You see that hill? That’s the gym.You run to the top and run down, avoiding the sheep.”

Since her golf triumph in Wales, Seymour’s other interests have kept her off the course more than she likes. Painting has become another passion, “like a drug,” she says. “Every weekend I say ‘Will I paint or will I play golf?’” She displays her work in galler­ies around the U.S., and her paintings—primarily floral motifs and portraits—have sold for as high as $35,000. When not guest-starring on TV shows like How I Met Your Mother, she’s on the road promot­ing her book and her Home Collection and making appearances for Running Dry, a documentary about the global drinking-water crisis, which Seymour nar­rates.”I’d be a better golfer if I didn’t have a thousand things going on,” she admits. But knowing her, she’ll find a As a spokesperson for Eons.com, a new website for over-50 baby boomers, Seymour created a list of 25 goals she’d like to accomplish before turning 100. Number 4: “Break 90 in golf.”

There are several advantages to hitting a wood or hybrid from the rough. A wood is lighter, so you can generate more club- head speed—crucial to getting the ball out of the deep grass; it has a wider sole than an iron, which allows the club-head to glide through the grass more easily; and the shallow clubface and lower, deeper center of gravity make it easier to launch the ball into the air.

Try using a wood the next time you find yourself in moderate rough more than a 9-iron distance from the flag. Make sure the front of the green is open and try to land the ball about 20 yards short of the green, chasing it up toward the hole.

Tactic of Long Punch-And-Run

A)     Set up with the ball in the center of your stance and about 60 per­cent of your weight favoring your left side. Choke down two inches on the grip to shorten the club, and stand about an inch closer to the ball than usual to promote a steeper takeaway.

B)      As you swing the club back, set your wrists early so the shaft forms a letter “v” with your left forearm halfway back. Feel as if your right elbow stays close to your body throughout the back- swing. This will put the club on a steeper path.

C)      Hit down on the ball to minimize the amount of grass you catch between the ball and the clubface, and finish low (hands below shoulder-height). Keep your swing smooth and allow the design of the club to do its job: get the ball airborne.

Any course designer would relish the opportunity to shape such a spectacular landscape into equally spectacular fairways and greens. Among those who have are such creative legends as Robert Cupp, Tom Weiskopf, Jack Nicklaus, Robert Trent Jones Jr. and Tom Fazio. A perfect way to sample many of the best is to tee it up in the west’s biggest amateur handicap golf event, the Northwest Dodge Dealers Pacific Amateur Golf Classic. Golfers will compete for three days at a different course each day. Those advancing to the championship roondwill tangle with the legendary Crosswater at Sunriver Resort, tanked among America’s best by Golf Digest.

After each day’s round, golfers can attend special 19th-hole activities at Sunriver, the PacArn’s official host site. The tournament’s comprehensive website (PacArngolf.com) has details about the event including information about the courses, the hotel options and the playing format.

With so many things to do and so many courses to play, it’s no wonder vacationers return to Central Oregon year after year.

Annika has had Callaway Golf equipment in her bag since she turned professional in 1994, and she wants you to have the same competitive golfing skills advantage she does. Using Callaway Golf’s proprietary Callaway Performance Analysis System, you’ll be custom fit for the clubs that best suit your swing in a state-of-the-art fit bay—the same environment used at Callaway Golf Performance Centers around the world. Using tvvo high-speed cameras and ball-flight simulators, a computer monitor will display your launch conditions—ball speed, launch angle and spin rates.

With the help of this technology Annika‘s sister, Charlotte Sorenstam, will provide complimentary club-fitting sessions during your stay. She’ll make recommendations on the driver and irons that best suit your swing, as well as shaft flex, shaft length, grip, and loft and lie. Your clubs will be shipped directly to your home. Academy instructors also utilize K-Vest technology to record and analyze your swing in 3D animation. Later, they can e-mail virtual golf lessons to you at home.

Annika’s quest for perfection is ever present at the Academy; boutique-style instruction, limited to eight participants at a time, maximizes individual attention, while customizable packages can be put together to meet your unique golf or fitness needs. Relaxation and indulgences are not forgotten: After spending hours on the range or working out in the world-class gym, enjoy poolside lunches and gourmet dinners specially prepared by the resort’s executive chef, Christian Schmidt. Before you leave, be sure to complete an evaluation; Annika reads every single one because she truly wants to exceed all expectations.

by George Plimpton.

A beloved figure in the lit­erary world and a founding editor of The Paris Review, Plimpton became famous in the 1960s for trying his hand at such profes­sional sports as NFL football and major league baseball—and living writing for Hollywood. But he loved golf and wrote prolifically on the subject.

In this collection of tales about a fictional golf club, his female characters are as entertaining as the male ones. There’s the low- handicapper Jane, whose romantic musings about her fiancé, William, include the delight she takes in his nearly equal handicap. And then there’s the club champion Agnes Flack, who hits it 240 yards and never lets a touch of rain put her off her game.

In the deliciously absurd “Feet of Clay” the final round of the Women’s Singles Championship involves a thunderstorm, a Pekinese and an “expensively uphol­stered” Lulabelle Sprockett, heir to Sprockett’s Superfine Sardines.

THE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF WOMEN’S GOLF by Rhonda Glenn

This first-rate compendium opens with Mary, Queen of. Scots (who incurred the disfavor of the local Presbyterians when she mourned her husband’s death with a few rounds of golf) and ends with Nancy Lopez.

The pages in between cover the most important amateur and professional golfers of their time, some obscure (Edith Cummings, winner of the 1923 U.S. Women’s Amateur) and some famous (Mickey Wright, Patty Berg).

Glenn, a writer and golf commentator, brings this well-researched and diverting text to life with a gen­erous number of historical photos. So how in heaven did they play in those enormous dresses?

THE CONFIDENTIAL GUIDE TO GOLF COURSES by Tom Doak

Now one of the world’s most in-demand golf course architects, Doak played more than 1,000 courses in the 1980s and ’90s, and in this mighty work, he delivers the truth on the failings and the successes he found. The book opens with “The Gourmet’s Choice”-31 of his favorites, including Casa de Campo in the Dominican Republic and Royal Dornoch GC in Scotland—and continues with comprehensive directories of courses in the U.S. and abroad.

He dedicates the closing pages to hugely enjoyable lists of the best and the worst in categories ranging from “Courses I’d Most Like to Play with Dianna [his wife]” (St. Enodoc GC in Cornwall, England, tops the list) to “Courses I’d Never Play Again” (New Jersey’s Stone Harbor GC).

The honest clarity of his critiques almost makes you wince; in fact, Doak mentions that Alice Dye gave him a “motherly scolding” for having written the book at all. He seems to have grown more diplomatic, because he refuses to allow the book to be reprinted.