NAPLES, FL. – Yes, Naples is one of the most beautiful cities in the United States. And, yes, it has one of the best year-around climates. Temperatures were ideal for the entire month we stayed there.

This winter hotspot in southwest Florida has plenty to entice you. Good restaurants are in ample supply (though on the pricy side). The Dock, Turtle Club and newly-opened Masa – a very different type of Mexican place – were our favorites. Campiello’s wasn’t bad, either.

A two-hour bus tour of the area introduced to some beautiful homes and a wide range of tourist attractions.

And then there was, of course, the golf. The Naples area lists 91 courses, and we played 10. Sarasota, the winter retreat of a year ago, is only two hours away but the golf was preferable there. It’s not that Naples golf was bad, but it was different.

Our goal – as is always the case on our travels – is to play a wide variety of places and that means looking for the best values. No matter where you go, it’s nice to learn about a new area at least in part by playing its golf courses. In Naples that wasn’t so easy. In-season prices were discouraging, for one thing. And it seemed like most of the courses wanted to be considered private – but most weren’t. You could call and frequently get on.

There was a striking similarity to their entrances, be it Heritage Bay, The Quarry, Naples Heritage, TwinEagles (see photo above), Bonita Bay. And the holes generally had fairways with lodging on one side and water or more lodging on the other. One local that I played with said – without malice – that they looked like bowling alleys. Truthfully, that wasn’t so much a negative as it was a general description of how things are.

Thank goodness for the availability of golfnow.com. Not sure we could have played golf the way we like to play it without that website.

We enjoyed our condo in one golf community (Heritage Bay), but never could wangle a tee time there — though the 27 holes available were at least nominally open for public play (it was a new golfnow.com offering) and clearly not in full use.

The most notable round of our stay was the last one – at TwinEagles, a 36-hole private club with an enviable history. In 2012 it hosted events on two of the major world tours – the Ace Group Classic on the Champions Tour and the CME Titleholders Championship on the Ladies PGA Tour.

Jack Nicklaus designed TwinEagles’ Talon course, which was being prepared for the Champions Tour return in February. The Champions circuit played an event on the Talon from 2002-06 and returned in 2012. It produced some great winners – Hale Irwin, Loren Roberts and Kenny Perry among them — and Tom Watson was a runner-up there three times.

We played the Eagle, originally known as the Aerie course designed by Gary Player. Steve Smyers, who did a great job in renovating the South Course at Olympia Fields in recent years, completed a remake of the Eagle in January of 2012 and it hosted the LPGA event 11 months later.

The Eagle was much different – in a most positive way – from all the other courses we played in Naples. For one thing, virtually every green was significantly elevated (see photo above). I don’t know if I’ve ever played greens so large and so undulating. Using the putter from far off the putting surfaces was a good option on many holes (see photo below). The style took some getting used to, but it was refreshing.

Of the other courses we tested only three billed themselves as “public.’’ ArrowHead, designed by the respected Gordon Lewis, was the best value (and the only course we played more than once). Valencia was fine, too, and those two layouts were also the most welcoming. Though they declared themselves public, they, too, were built within housing areas.

Hibiscus was the other self-declared public layout, and it was the only free-standing (not connected with a specific residential area) one. Hibiscus had a cheerful new clubhouse, well-done yardage book (not a given at the Naples courses we visited) and the most memorable hole – the challenging par-5 14th which featured a shot to the green over a pond lined with beautiful bougainvillea. The flowering hibiscus was a feature throughout the layout, which was built in 1969.

Other than TwinEagles, the course that stood out the most was Panther Run. Its name seemed a secret, as its signage more clearly identified the layout more as part of the Del Webb community in the most interesting little town of Ave Maria rather than by its designated name. A preseason training base for soccer’s Chicago Fire, Ave Maria is a small, upscale community with a big church as the centerpiece. Not only does it include the Del Webb community for retirees, it also includes a small college campus.

The golf course – another Lewis design — was a cut above the others on our menu of those reasonably priced. It had wide fairways and could be stretched to 7,532 yards – very much a fun track to play.

The first course we played was also one of the better ones. Herons Glen was part of a bustling country club setting in the nearby town of North Ft. Myers.

Perhaps the prettiest layout was Spanish Wells, in Bonita Springs. It had three nines, which is always a big plus. The South, the first nine we played, had extremely tight fairways and our cart went dead on the seventh hole. It took an unusually long time for staff personnel to rescue us, so that bad experience detracted from our appraisal of the facility.

Lely Resort also had more than 18 holes. It had two 18-holers, and we played the Flamingo Island Club – a fairly challenging layout that had the same rating (75.1) and slightly higher slope (138 to 137) than its companion, the Mustang course.

Quail Village was also a tight one, and its space was limited. The course played 4,873 yards from the back tees.

One striking thing about our overall golfing experience in the Naples area was our playing partners. Of the three couples we were randomly paired with, all were from outside the United States. Two were from Montreal and one from Munich, Germany. All were very nice people and added some special memories to this golf getaway.

MYRTLE BEACH, S.C. – It’s almost mind-boggling when you think about it. A three-month visitor to this long-time golf hotbed could play a different course every day and would still not have played all the layouts offered.

Myrtle Beach, which aptly bills itself as the “Golf Capital of the World,’’ has over 100 courses packed into the 60-mile stretch of coastline known as the Grand Strand. They’re not a bunch of cookie-cutters, either. That became quite clear on my second visit to the area, which unfortunately fell a full eight years after the first.

The home base on Murrells Inlet wasn’t far from the one a Pawley’s Island years ago, and one of the courses – the Caledonia Golf & Fish Club – was a must replay. It seems that all my golfing friends who have visited Myrtle Beach at one time or another love Caledonia. The shrimp bisque soup, offered between nines as well as in the clubhouse, and the bright flowering on most of the tee boxes (shown above) are just some of the reasons.

Good friend Reid Hanley, the late golf writer for the Chicago Tribune who played widely around the country, always called Caledonia “a very special place,’’ and I have to agree. Rarely do I play any course a second time and like it as much as I did the first, but Caledonia fit that bill – even with the second time around coming on a windy December day with temperatures in the 40s.

Mike Strantz was the designer for this relatively short (6,526 yards if you play from the tips) layout, which was built on a one-time rice plantation in 1994. Unfortunately Strantz did his work largely in the South. He’s quite good. Caledonia’s companion course, True Blue, was also one of his designs. That one opened four years after Caledonia.

Lot of people already know about Caledonia, of course. They might not know about the Founder Club at Pawley’s Island. It’s only been in operation since 2008, after a massive renovation directed by Thomas Walker, former lead designer for Gary Player’s architectural efforts.

Walker started with a much more basic course that had been called Sea Gull Golf Club. The extensive renovation included the clubhouse, and the finished product is commendable.

I’ve never played a course quite like the Founders Club. There’s no cart paths on this layout. Instead you drive through waste hazards when a fairway isn’t available and the bunkering (an example is shown below at the No. 18 green) is striking. You also cross roads that can have car traffic 14 times. All of that makes for a most refreshing way to play golf, and the greens are unusual, too. They’re grassed with Emerald Bermuda, which almost has the feel of an artificial surface.

Capturing what’s new in golf is a high priority, and our final round of this Myrtle Beach visit was at Willbrook Plantation, still another course that was much different than the other two.

Willbrook, a Dan Maples design that has been named on Golf For Women’s Top 100 list, is part of a gated community with a most upscale atmosphere. Unfortunately, our visit was hampered by rainy weather and limited to a cart tour of the premises, but it was revealing. Especially noteworthy was No. 6, a strikingly beautiful par-3 over water (shown below).

Like Caledonia, Willbrook was built on what had been a rice plantation. Unlike Caledonia, the land’s history is underscored with commemorative plaques all around the course.

As for lodging, we wanted something new and different – and the two-year old Inlet Sports Lodge fit the bill perfectly. The local investment group that owns Caledonia and True Blue also owns Inlet Sports Lodge, which is a base for outdoor sports enthusiasts as well as golfers.

Rooms included custom-etched mahogany doors with key fobs, heart of pine wood floors, salad bowl-like sinks sitting on granite counter tops, bathrobes and pressured shower jets with five different heads. Adjoining the Lodge was Bliss, an excellent upscale chef-driven restaurant that provided a nice alternative to the more traditional dining spots in the area.

The traditional ones – we liked 20-year old Russell’s Seafood Grill and Drunken Jacks, clearly a favorite of the locals – were plenty good, too. They offered the cuisine that has helped bring tons of visitors back to this golf mecca.

PINEHURST, N.C. – It may seem silly for a golf addict from Chicago to visit the famous Pinehurst Resort – if only for a few days around Christmas – and not hit a shot. That’s what I did at the start of a long winter trip that will include plenty of golf, I guarantee that.

A Pinehurst stop, though, was appropriate because in 2014 that resort, its entrance pictured above in the heart of the Christmas season, will take on something no golf facility has ever done. It’ll host – on successive weeks in June – the men’s U.S. Open and the U.S. Women’s Open on the same 18-hole layout.

The buildup to the big golf doubleheader should be followed closely in coming months. In my book, it’s a far more cutting edge, risky endeavor than the U.S. Golf Association’s more recent, highly publicized decision to eventually ban anchored putters. Playing the two national Opens back-to-back on the same course should give a particularly big boost to the women’s game, but will also impact the elite players, the amateurs who will be watching on TV and the resort itself, which has never been reluctant to take on big projects.

The USGA made the tournament schedule announcement amidst limited fanfare in 2009. The following year architects Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw were hired to supervise a restoration project on Pinehurst’s No. 2 course. They completed the project in March, 2011, with the return of wire-grass in the rough areas the most striking feature. It had been part of the original course, designed by Donald Ross in 1907.

Ross was head professional at Pinehurst and lived off the third hole on the No. 2 course, which has come to be called “The Deuce.’’ His architectural efforts world-wide are legendary and the wire-grass will become a household name for golfers once they see how it impacts the two Opens. I’ve played it, and I like it, but – like the USGA’s decision to schedule the major championships back-to-back on the same course – opinions in the golf world are not unanimous on either.

The Christmas visit was my fourth to Pinehurst since 1999. I was there for two successful U.S. Opens and again when wire-grass was re-introduced in the spring of 2011. Given the long preparatory saga that Medinah went through leading into this year’s Ryder Cup, I suspected I’d see some evidence of preparatory work at Pinehurst.

I didn’t see much, the most notable being Lee Pace’s latest book — “The Golden Age of Pinehurst,’’ which was on sale in the Newstand at the resort’s hotel. Pace, a freelance writer who lives an hour away in Chapel Hill, previously authored two versions of “Pinehurst Stories’’ (1991 and 1999) and “The Spirit of Pinehurst’’ (2004).

Pace’s latest book updated the 2004 version, including in it the details of the architectural work done by Coore and Crenshaw. I had a talk with Pace after ending my latest visit, and he pointed out that the restoration project and the unusual scheduling of the two big tournaments weren’t related.

“The restoration had absolutely nothing to do with the U.S. Open,’’ he said. “That work was done because the course had gotten away from what it had been years ago.’’

The men’s U.S. Open is returning to Pinehurst in large part because of the success of the previous tournaments there, and the U.S. Women’s Open had three successful stagings at nearby Pine Needles since 1996.

There was some doubt that Pinehurst could handle a U.S. Open prior to 1999. They were unfounded.

“But it was such a success inside and outside of the ropes,’’ said Pace. “That’s why it got another Open so quickly (in 2005).’’

Hotel space was limited in 1999 but improved in 2005 and four more hotels have since been built in the neighboring towns of Aberdeen and Southern Pines. Population of Moore County has also increased, from about 50,000 seven years ago to nearly 90,000 now.

Reg Jones, who had worked for Pinehurst while directing the two previous U.S. Opens there, now has an administrative office at Pinehurst in preparation for 2014. Otherwise, there aren’t many outward signs of the big things coming.

“You won’t see much change until a couple months out,’’ said Pace. “(Pinehurst leaders) don’t want to disrupt the ebb and flow of the club experience. They have (big tournament preparations) down to a science. There’s not another club the USGA would have tried to do this with, and everything will be fine.’’

As for our stay, everything was very much fine – even though the atmosphere was much different than it will be in June, 2014. Christmas at Pinehurst didn’t have the hustle-and-bustle of other places, visitors weren’t as numerous as they are in the golf season and some of the quaint little shops in the village operated on limited hours.

Instead Pinehurst offered its trademark great breakfast buffets in the Carolina Room and more casual dining in its Ryder Cup restaurant. The courses were open, with the exception of No. 8. It was closed to facilitate work projects. Rather than play golf, a hike in the nearby arboretum area was a worthy substitute.

All in all, not a bad way to celebrate Christmas. I certainly can recommend it.

CAMDENTON, Mo. – It’s easy to have warm feelings about Missouri’s Lake of the Ozarks region. Mine go back to college days, and that was way too long ago.

Not everything in the world is better now than it was back in those more carefree years, but Lake of the Ozarks fits the bill. It still has its beautiful lakes and down-to-earth charm, and – make no mistake – the golf has gotten better, too.

As recently as the early 1990s the area had just five 18-hole courses, the hotbeds being at the two big resorts – Tan-Tar-A and Lodge of the Four Seasons. Those spots are still thriving, but now the number of public courses in the region is up to 13 and nine having lodging available.

Perhaps the best of the course now – and I’ve played most of them at one time or another — is Old Kinderhook, located in Camdenton (population about 4,000). It’s hard to describe Old Kinderhook, a place that got its name off the former name of Camden County.

Paul Hannigan, an all-purpose staffer at Old Kinderhook with a work background that includes doing sports radio in Illinois, admits that Old Kinderhook isn’t really a resort because it doesn’t have a hotel. That will soon change. The resort will reveal artists’ renderings and plans for The Lodge at Old Kinderhook on Oct. 30, 2013. It’s expected to be a five-story structure near the current pro shop.

Even without a hotel Old Kinderhook has plenty of lodging, thereby definitely qualifying it as a golf destination. On the premises are cottages, villas, patio homes and estate homes. There’s also a conference center and two quality restaurants – The Hook Café for breakfast and lunch and The Trophy Room, a most pleasant place for upscale evening dining.

You don’t have to give up the more homespun places that have marked the Ozarks for decades, though. RJ’s Family Restaurant (some Ozark veterans may know it as CJ’s, but the name was changed in recent years) and Tonka Hills are nearby spots that worked out for breakfast and Jake Culpepper’s Steakhouse was a fun dinner spot.

Normally, full-fledged golf resorts offer more than one course. Old Kinderhook doesn’t, but Lake Valley – a fun layout with six par-5s, six par-4s and six par-3s – is across the street on Rt. 54 and Deer Chase, newest of the Ozark courses (it opened in 2004), is a short drive away — though a bit off the beaten path — in Linn Creek.

As for the Old Kinderhook layout, it’s got a bit of everything. Tom Weiskopf, the long-successful PGA Tour star, designed it in 1999, and it wasn’t just a case of him putting his name on the course for promotional value. Weiskopf actually lived in the area for a few months when Old Kinderhook was under construction.

The 6,855-yard par-71 finished product reminds me of Cedar River, another Weiskopf design at the long-popular Michigan resort, Shanty Creek in Bellaire. Cedar River is outstanding, but Old Kinderhook may be even better thanks to its stunning elevation changes.

Old Kinderhook has zoysia fairways and large bentgrass greens, and it’s open year-around. After a mid-November round there I was most impressed with the variety of the par-3s. No. 3, at 206 yards from the tips, offers a dramatic downhill tee shot. The shortest, the 152-yard seventh (pictured above), plays over a ravine and is my most memorable of the four one-shotters. A great view of the lake on the left is featured at the 11th, another downhiller, and water is on the right at the 16th, which has a split-level green.

In addition to the course, considered perhaps Weiskopf’s best, there’s an 11-acre practice range and two putting greens. It’s a golf destination very much worth checking out, and it’s been getting better. Thirty homes were built in a 24-month span and a 12,000-square foot garden was created behind the No. 12 tee to supplement the restaurant’s food offerings.

GAYLORD, MI. – It has never ceased to amaze me how much better golf is in Michigan than it is in any other state. The season isn’t very long there, but the number of quality public courses is extraordinary. I should know.

For over 25 years – starting about the time of the 1985 U.S. Open at Oakland Hills – I’ve been a regular Michigan visitor just because of the golf offered. Most of the trips were between two and five days (a couple might have lasted a week), and usually there were two or three per year. And rarely have I played a course more than once. There are so many good courses in Michigan you don’t want to miss one.

This isn’t to spotlight specific courses, though. This is to put the state’s golf success story in perspective, and no one place could do it better than the Gaylord Golf Mecca, a marketing affiliation that celebrated its 25th anniversary in August with an outing and dinner at the Masterpiece — a Robert Trent Jones Sr. design at Treetops Resort.

Keith Gornick, owner of the Hidden Valley Resort, is credited with starting the Mecca. Tired of the area’s golf facilities fighting each other for business, he invited the owners of several of them to a winter lunch in 1987. The result was the formation of the Gaylord Golf Council.

To say that was a wise move is putting it mildly. Instead of battling each other the owners mounted a cooperative effort that has resulted in more than 3.6 million golfers playing on Mecca courses over the last 25 years.

The Mecca started with six courses – Wilderness Valley, Garland, Gaylord Country Club, Michaywe Pines, the then-new Masterpiece course at Sylvan Resort (now named Treetops) and the Classic – oldest of the lot (it opened in 1955) on the grounds of ski hotbed Otsego Club.

Now the Mecca encompasses 17 courses, 306 holes, four resorts and 21 hotel properties to accommodate stay-and-play properties. Course architects represented in the Mecca include, in addition to Jones Sr., include the likes of Tom Fazio, Tom Doak, Rees Jones, Rick Smith, Jerry Matthews and Gary Koch.

The courses include Threetops, which bills itself with justification as “the No. 1 Par 3 Course in America.’’ Lots of pro stars have played it, and Lee Trevino earned $1,090,000 with one swing when he made a hole-in-one on the No. 7 hole – a feat that is now described as “the shot heard round the world.’’

Elevation changes make the biggest impact on me when I play in Michigan, and none is more pronounced than the 219-yard straight downhill third hole at Threetops. The signature sixth hole at Jones’ Masterpiece (shown below) has a breathtaking vertical drop (120 feet) as well.

Everybody has their favorites at the Mecca. I’m a big fan of Otsego’s Tribute – a fun layout designed by Rick Robbins and Koch, the PGA Tour veteran and NBC golf analyst. This last trip involved playing three of the Mecca courses, but Gaylord is a full day’s drive from Chicago so catching other courses on the way is a must if time permits. For us it did.

Shanty Creek Resorts, in Bellaire, has been a frequent stop over the years starting when the resort opened The Legend, an Arnold Palmer design that celebrated its own 25th anniversary in 2011. Shanty’s a top-quality resort (it just completed a $10 million renovation) with three other courses, our favorite being the Tom Weiskopf-designed Cedar River. Most fun layout, though, is Schuss Mountain, which has long been popular with locals. For non-golf activity the view of Lake Bellaire is spectacular from the dining area of the Lakeview Restaurant and Lounge.

Michigan golf leaders have always been ahead of ahead of the national curve, and a good example of that came at Schuss Mountain. In an effort to make golf more enjoyable for beginners the layout has two cup placements on each hole. One has the traditional 4 ¼-inch cup and the other – usually in the back of the green – is eight inches wide. You can play to either or – as we did – try out them both. Head professional Brian Kautz said that two-cup plan may be extended to Shanty’s fourth course, Summit, next year. Though a full-length 18-holer, the Summit also features par-3 tee boxes on every hole.

Another stop on the way to Gaylord this year was Forest Dunes, in Roscommon. People who should know tell me Forest Dunes has the best greens in Michigan. The raters from both Golf Magazine and Golf Digest apparently agree. Golf Digest rated Forest Dunes No. 20 in its list of the top 100 U.S. public courses and Golf Magazine elevated it from 45th last year to 33rd on its Best Public Courses in the U.S. list.

Forest Dunes’ location is on the remote side, but you couldn’t tell that on the weekday that we visited. A youth tournament, combined with public play, made it a most busy place.

The Mecca anniversary outing, which included an inspiring speech from Michigan lieutenant governor Brian Calley at the post-golf dinner, climaxed our second golf journey into the state in 2012. Our next such adventure on the Michigan’s links can’t come soon enough.

CHESTERTON, Ind. – Tim Miles Sr. tells me I’ve made golf history. He says I’m the first member of GolfVisions’ Player Pass program to play all of the 16 courses offered in this most innovative program, and I’ll tell you it wasn’t easy.

Miles, the GolfVisions president, started the Player Pass program two years ago and tweaked it for this season. GolfVisions is a course management firm that Miles founded under the name GreenVisions in 1989. It presently oversees 11 courses in Illinois, two in Indiana, one in Michigan and two in Florida.

Under the Player Pass program, you pay an annual fee to join, then get one free greens fee at each course plus other perks – the lowest fee the course offers for your playing partners, free range balls and discounts on meals and pro shop merchandise.

A friend urged me to sign up for a Players Pass and it took me a month – bolstered by a reduced holiday special rate of $99 prior to Christmas – to do it. While I’ve played all 16 courses, my buddy – for a variety of reasons – has played but two. He says he’ll catch more of the courses before the year is out, and I hope he does. My regular partner and I, meanwhile, made this our special project, and we had a lot of fun with it.

To make the program fully work you have to have the time and willingness to travel. Just playing the two Florida courses, Club at Pennbrooke Fairways in Leesburg and Green Valley in Clermont, made it worthwhile for us. In our two-month Florida stay in January and February you pay top-dollar for greens fees. Thanks to my Player Pass we got in two rounds (two people with cart) for $27 apiece. Now that’s $54 for four rounds of golf with cart. That’s a bargain anytime, but especially in central Florida during the height of the tourist season.

Pennbrooke had 27 holes, broken into the Meadows, Oaks and Sanctuary nines. The first two were sporty, executive length layouts. Green Valley, which dates back to 1966, is a favorite of the locals. It’s a 6,645-yard par-72 with some nice elevation changes.

Had I played alone on weekdays at the courses without my Players Pass I would have spent $598, though senior rates might have knocked that number down in some instances. And that doesn’t include money that might have been spent on range balls and food and pro shop merchandise. It also doesn’t factor in the savings on my partner’s fees. Not bad for a $99 investment.

Some of the close-to-home courses (Foxford Hills and Chalet Hills in Cary, Settlers Hill in Geneva, Village Green in Mundelein, Oak Grove in Hebron and HeatherRidge in Gurnee) are regular annual stops for this hacker who relishes playing lots of courses rather than limiting myself to the one in which I am a member. Those weren’t all played as part of the 2012 Player Pass program but I have plenty of familiarity with them.

Anyway, this project wasn’t so much about saving money as it was about having golf adventures. What the Player Pass did was encourage us to take some day-long golf getaways, the longest of which was to the Michigan course, Whittaker Woods. It required a 130-mile drive each way.

Some of the courses were better than others, of course, but all offered something a little different from the ones we play on a regular basis and we also got a chance to see different areas than we would have just playing near home. We tried some most interesting restaurants along the way as well.

Our favorite course of the lot was The Brassie (pictured above), in Chesterton, Ind. We played that one in 102-degree temperatures. It was like a sauna out there. The Brassie is a links-style course designed by Jim Fazio (not George or Tom) in 1998. Jim and Tom are the nephews of the late George, who designed Butler National in Oak Brook, among others. Tom has some great creations, too, most notably Conway Farms in Lake Forest. Jim’s The Brassie isn’t bad, either.

The Brassie had the very best Course Guide that I’ve ever seen – and that’s saying something, given the number and variety of courses I’ve played in over four decades as a golf journalist. The staff at The Brassie was also extraordinarily friendly — and that’s not to say the staffs at the other courses weren’t. At The Brassie, though, the people went beyond the expected service. Our random selection for dinner before heading home, — the Lucrezia Café, a cozy Italian place – worked out well, too.

On one trip we hit two of the courses – Tanna Farms, in Yorkville, IL., first and Deer Valley, in Big Rock, IL., on the way home. Deer Valley has the smallest greens I’ve ever seen. It’s a nine-holer built by John Flodstrom who owned the land in 1995. He later sold it to Kane County.

Deer Valley had a log-cabin clubhouse and the lowest Players Pass fee of the places we visited — $12 with cart for two players – and it was a fun, but challenging, layout. Our round there came in the aftermath of 18 holes at Tanna Farms, which has tons of wetlands and a most unusual start; there’s no par-4 hole until No. 4. You open with a par-3 over water, then hit a par-5 and then another par-3.

A few weeks before making the Tanna Farms-Deer Creek run we visited Nettle Creek, in Morris. This place had a most charming clubhouse, excellent food, a challenging start (especially the first two holes), a well-conditioned course and a most polite staff. What more could you want? Too bad Nettle Creek is so far from home. I would play it more often.

Two of the courses had undergone some obvious problems. The clubhouse had burned down several years ago at Hunter Country Club, in Richmond, IL. – a quaint little town just inside the Wisconsin border – and operations were conducted out of a trailer in the parking lot. And GolfVisions had just taken over Chapel Hill, a McHenry layout known for having the only hole over 700 yards in Illinois. The clubhouse was shuttered at Chapel Hill, with all business done out of the golf shop. I had played both Hunter and Chapel Hill many years before (at least 10 in both instances) and was just happy to see that they were still in operation.

River Pointe Country Club, in Hobart, Ind., had the most interesting history. It was a long-time private club created by American Steel Supervisors. This was the biggest of the facilities – 27 holes – with Red, White and Blue full-length nines.

Our journey ended, appropriately, at Whittaker Woods (pictured below), in New Buffalo, MI. It was a highlight to our golfing odyssey.

Opened in 1996, Whittaker Woods had an extremely tight front nine holes. The starter tells you “You may lose your ball if you hit it into the trees, but you could find three while you’re looking for it.’’ That tells you right away the challenge you’re about to face.

Needless to say, we put some balls in the trees on that front side. Then you come to No. 10 and you’re surprised — and relieved — to find a wide open tee shot. This course had tee shots over wetlands on almost every hole, it seemed, but the fairways and greens were in great shape.

Whittaker Woods also had the nicest-looking restaurant of the Players Pass facilities. The only drawback was that the restaurant had already closed by 5 p.m. We found that unusual, but there are plenty of good dining spots in New Buffalo. We ate at Brewsters with the couple that played with us, completing a most enjoyable day.

Miles, a former golf team captain at the University of Missouri, created excitement at the last two Chicago Golf Shows when he provided patrons with free greens fees at some of his courses. GolfVisions didn’t have as many Player Pass buyers this year as it did in 2011, but Miles plans to continue the program next year with some minor tweaks.

“It’ll be similar to what we did this year,’’ he said. “This is a promotion, to see if we can get people to try our courses. We’re real happy with it.’’