Instead of plunking down several million dollars for a waterfront villa in Hawaii, for example, you can purchase nearly one month’s worth of use in an island vacation home for a fraction of the cost. As a Club member, you and your guests will appreciate the comforts of home while being treated to the legendary services and lavish amenities that Ritz-Carlton hotel guests enjoy.

Among the locations—and more on the way—are some delightful golf prop­erties. Now open, The Ritz-Carlton Golf Club & Spa (Jupiter, Fla.) boasts an im­peccably manicured Jack Nicklaus Signature Golf Course and Addison Mizner-inspired architecture. Available for occupancy in the next few years, ad­ditional locations will offer a variety of golf experiences. Five consecutive ocean­front holes will inspire players at The Ritz- Carlton Club, Kauai lagoons (Hawaii). Golfers will also be enchanted by The Ritz-Carlton Club, Kapalua Bay (Hawaii), located in the famed Kapalua Resort, which has set the standard of sophistication on Maui.

Each location serves up unique activities with a local flair, along with all the extravagances Ritz-Carlton fans have come to expect: rejuvenating spa services, palate-tantalizing cuisine, attentive staff and elegant decor. Floor plans range from one to four bedrooms, and all residences are well appointed with fully equipped kitchens, appliances and plush interiors. As an added benefit, members may explore other Ritz-Carlton Club residences through reciprocal-used privileges.

Fractional ownership with The Ritz-Carlton Club is changing the future of vacation-home ownership.

In Hot Springs,Va., The Homestead first welcomed guests in 1766. J.P. Morgan bought the place in 1888, adding the main building, the famed spa with its gorgeous indoor pool and a Donald Ross golf course, the first of three 18-hole layouts. New owner KSL Resorts has updated the bathrooms in all 486 rooms, put in a new driving range at The Cascades Course and restored  the Old Course bunkers to Ross’ original 1913 design. Darling, you look marvelous.

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.

MODEL YEAR: 2007

BEST FOR : Going fast without sacrificing seating and lug­gage space.

LOOKS : Low and aggressive, like the muscle car your first boyfriend had back in the day.

ENGINE : 6.1 liter SRT Hemi V8; 425 hp.

PROS AND CONS : This high-performance version of the 300 sedan is a living room on wheels. But its interior lacks the panache of the European luxury sedans.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : Two to three.

HOW IT DRIVES: Loud and proud. The Hemi engine provides snap-your-neck acceleration, and the sport-tuned suspension gives this rear-wheel-drive vehicle a firmer ride for better handling.

COOL OPTIONS : Satellite navigation system, chrome-detailed side molding, chromed mirrors and door handles, rear entertainment system.

Infiniti G35X AWD

MODEL YEAR : 2007

BEST FOR: A high-spirited romp through the urban jungle.

LOOKS : Performance meets sex appeal.

ENGINE : 3.5 liter V6; 306 hp.

PROS AND CONS : This all-wheel-drive version of the second-generation G35 is a low-slung sedan with a luxurious feel, thanks to the leather-wrapped steering wheel, heated seats, violet-hued gauges and knobs, and textured aluminum trim. Some of our older passengers found it a bit too low to the ground.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY :Two Golf Bag.

HOW IT DRIVES : Even better than the original: quicker on the straightaway, and smoother on its feet in the twisters. It practically danced around tight corners.

COOL OPTIONS : XM satellite radio, Bose sound system, Blue- tooth hands-free phone system, African rosewood trim.

VW EOS

MODEL YEAR : 2007

BEST FOR : Having fun, fun, fun till your husband takes the car keys away.

LOOKS : Cute as a button.

ENGINE : 2.0 liter, turbocharged inline four cylinder; 200 hp.

PROS AND CONS : Named after the Greek goddess of dawn, the Eos is one of the best convertible val­ues around. It’s also the only hardtop with a power sunroof. But the top hogs the trunk when down, so throw your bag in the backseat.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : One with top up, zero with top down.

HOW IT DRIVES : The turbo engine provides lots of smooth, easy power, and the car handled like a champ.

COOL OPTIONS: DVD navigation system, leather seats, Dynaudio sound system.

SUN MOUNTAIN SUPERLIGHT 3.5 WITH HUG TECHNOLOGY

Weighing in at less than four pounds, this new bag features a unique padded aluminum arm that fits snugly around your waist, transfer­ring most of its weight from your shoulders to your hips.

OGIO DIVA

Another featherweight at just over four pounds, the Diva has an innovative top
that keeps each wood separate for easy access. With a comfortable double strap and eight pockets, it’s everything a girl could want.

NIKE XTREME SPORT

This five-pound women’s bag features a double strap that becomes a single strap with a simple click. Extras include seven roomy pockets, a sturdy stand and six-way, full-length club dividers.

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.”

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.

Mercedes-Benz CLS550

MODEL YEAR: 2007

BEST FOR : Thrill- seeking golfers who want to push it.

LOOKS : Low to the ground and gorgeous.

ENGINE : 5.5 liter 32-valve V8; 382 hp.

PROS AND CONS : The interior is richly appointed in leather and wood, and the uncluttered gauge cluster is easy to read. Loved the iPod interface, but the low roof made it a little difficult to get in and out of the cockpit.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : Two to three.

HOW IT DRIVES : Firm, smooth and super powerful, it makes you feel like you own the road.

COOL OPTIONS : Tele-Aid roadside assistance, cockpit management and data system with radio, CD player and color LCD navigation screen.

BMW 335i Convertible

MODEL YEAR : 2007

BEST FOR : Cruising to your favorite course-on the other side of the state.

LOOKS : Crisp and stylish, whether the top is up or down.

ENGINE : 3.0 liter 24-valve inline six cylinder; 300 hp.

PROS AND CONS : The leather upholstery has heat-reflective technology that can lower its surface temperature by as much as 36 degrees. (No more burning the backs of your legs on a hot day!) The hardtop disappears into the trunk in a mere 22 seconds, but it gobbles up trunk space when lowered.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : One with top up. Zero with top down.

HOW IT DRIVES: The lightning-fast six-speed manual shifter and firm, athletic suspen­sion combine for an incredible experience.

COOL OPTIONS: 18-inch alloy wheels and sport-tuned suspension.

Land Rover LR2

MODEL YEAR : 2008

BEST FOR : Indulgent, everyday driving, from the golf course to the mall.

LOOKS : A cross between the LR3 and Range Rover Sport: stylish, simple and, of course, boxy.

ENGINE : 3.2liter aluminum-alloy inline six cylinder; 230 hp.

PROS AND CONS : This small sport-Ute has an upright, muscular stance, a well-planned interior layout, supportive leather seats and seating for five. The gauges could be brighter and bigger.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : Four Golf Bag.

HOW IT DRIVES : Very stable and balanced, even when we pushed it hard. The engine delivered decent get-up-and-go and plenty of grunts for powering over speed bumps. All four wheels stayed firmly connected to the ground at all times.

COOL OPTIONS : GPS navigation system, Bluetooth integration, heated seats, heated windshield and windshield wipers.

Lexus LS460L

MODEL YEAR : 2007

BEST FOR : Did someone say golf road trip?

LOOKS : Mus­cular yet refined.

ENGINE : 4.6 liter V8; 380 hp. (A hybrid version arrives this fall.)

PROS AND CONS This sleek freeway flier comes equipped with an amazing array of tech-savvy gadgets, such as a voice-operated navigation system that provides real-time traffic updates for major cities. The Advanced Parking Guidance System takes time to set up, but once programmed, it’s well worth the extra $700.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : Two to three.

HOW IT DRIVES Oh-so-smooth, thanks to electric power-assist steering and sporty air suspension. We steered through twists and turns effortlessly.

COOL OPTIONS : Rear-seat entertainment system, 19-speaker Mark Levinson audio system.

Jaguar XKR Coupe

MODEL YEAR : 2007

BEST FOR : Making like a Bond girl who plays a mean game of golf.

LOOKS : Sleek and seductive.

ENGINE : Supercharged 4.2 liter V8; 420 hp.

PROS AND CONS : The touch screen in the burled-walnut dash, which controls the radio, navigation and other systems, is easy to read and use. The trunk is surprisingly roomy, but the rear seats are nearly useless-too small for even toddlers.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : Two Golf Bag.

HOW IT DRIVES : Wow! The cat growled as we steered along twisting back roads and down straight-line highways. A supple ride, terrific handling and loads of get-up-and-go.

COOL OPTIONS : 20-inch Senta wheels, premium sound system, Adaptive Cruise Control that monitors traffic via radar and brakes accordingly.

Cadillac Escalade

MODEL YEAR : 2007

BEST FOR : Stylishly transporting your friends and their gear.

LOOKS: A big daddy Caddy, yet still refined and classy.

ENGINE : 6.2 liter Vortec V8; 403 hp. (A hybrid version arrives this fall.)

PROS AND CONS : Feels like a luxury vehicle, with faux wood and aluminum trim, double-stitched leather seats and electro­luminescent gauges. The touch-screen interface in the dash worked well in navigation mode, Sot so well in audio mode.

GOLF BAG CAPACITY : At least four, more if you fold down the third-row seat.

HOW IT DRIVES: Surprisingly quick, agile and quiet, more luxury sedan than land yacht.

COOL OPTIONS : DVD navigation system with rearview camera, Bose sound system, retractable assist steps.