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Sony Open, January 15–18, Waialae (Golf Channel) Bob Hope Chrysler Classic, January 22–25 (Golf Channel) FBR Open, January 31–February 1, TPC Scottsdale (CBS) Buick Invitational, February 5–8, Torrey Pines (Golf Channel and CBS) AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am, February 12–15 (Golf Channel and CBS) Northern Trust Open, February 21–22, Riviera (CBS) WGC-Accenture Match Play Championship, February 25–28, Dove Mountain (Golf Channel)

Did Tiger’s rivals take advantage? Given how long it takes to come back from major knee reconstruction, there has been plenty of conjecture about the absence of Tiger Woods from competition. Was there one player who took huge advantage of it? Padraig Harrington won the British Open, but he came in as defending champion. Then he won the PGA for good measure. Could Padraig have won both with Tiger around? That’s the question. Vijay Singh won his $10 million FedEx bonus. He and …

Even a commonsense swing tip can play havoc, as tour pros in contention learn Pressure situations jack up the nerves and lead to quick swings. That’s an accepted truth. Taking steps to avoid tension is important, but swing thoughts like “Take it back slow” and “Don’t get quick” can be overdone. Your natural swing tempo is like your thumbprint—it’s there for life and it provides the glue for everything else. When I was overhauling my swing and …

Curriculums at Faldo Institutes are built on fundamentals. Each offers schools, lessons and club-fitting. For U.S. institutes, call 888-463-2536 or visit gofaldo.com . For Brocket Hall, call 011-44/1707-368-786 or visit brocket-hall.co.uk . Marco Island Marriott Resort, Marco Island, Florida Marriott’s Grande Vista, Orlando, Florida Marriott’s Shadow Ridge, Palm Desert, California Brocket Hall Golf Club, Hertfordshire, England

Feel has always been putting’s holy grail. To improve it, manufacturers have been working on impact sound—and thus feel—through clever use of materials and weighting. Putters now offer a range of “feel profiles” from buttery-soft blades to firm and clicky mid-mallets to Anser-style heads that ring like well-tuned bells. Mid-Size Mallets Scotty Cameron Studio Select Squareback 1 The latest from Titleist should appeal to mallet and blade users alike. The …

Watching our Faldo Series championships last fall in Brazil, I was delighted to see how many young golfers were in the field and the many countries they represented. In ten years the number of players benefiting from this program has risen from three hundred or so (in the U.K. only) to more than four thousand worldwide. It all started with some chatter in the media, asking where the next British champions were coming from. The only way to address that question, in my view, was to start a …

This golf story takes place in a faraway and unlikely locale: Phnom Penh, Cambodia. I ended up there after visiting Vietnam in 2000 to assist a group of surgeons who had received laparoscopic equipment but had not been trained to use it. On that trip, I stopped by an orphanage outside Ho Chi Minh City. That experience changed my life. The children were starving for human contact. When I entered they ran up to me and hugged my legs, refusing to let go. When it was time to leave, the nuns had …

Alabama Greystone, Birmingham Tour stars Hale Irwin and Hubert Green were among the winners of the Bruno’s Memorial senior event, played on Greystone’s Bob Cupp–designed course during a fourteen-year run. The second course here, by Rees Jones, has a country manor–style stone clubhouse and hills of hardwood framing it. Golf 36 holes (Bob Cupp, Rees Jones). Homes From $350,000. Contact greystonecc.com . Arizona Blackstone Country Club, Peoria The desert topography is …

See our slideshow of The World’s Worst Travel Disasters. The off-season deal at the Mexican resort in the Riviera Maya sounded almost too good to be true, but the flight was seamless, the hotel fantastic, the food delicious. Everything, in fact, had been perfect—until now, on the third day of your vacation, when you hear the news that a major tropical storm is headed your way. The hotel staff posts a bulletin about hurricane preparation, and rumors start circulating that the …

See our slideshow of the Top Travel Stories of 2008. What do a hair-raising runway in Gibraltar, America’s most attractive people, and a $98-a-night Hawaiian beach resort have in common? They were all parts of the most-read stories on travelandleisure.com in 2008— The World’s Scariest Runways , America’s Favorite Cities , and 27 Affordable Beach Resorts . So, what do our most popular features reveal? Site visitors, it seems, like the taste of danger, are full of …

New York ’s Guggenheim Museum is eerily empty as my guy Steve and I admire Carsten Höller’s installation of a highly stylized bed, closet, table, chairs, and minibar, all balanced on four Plexiglas disks that are slowly revolving in different directions. The artwork’s sleek, Scandinavian aesthetic makes it look appealing enough to sleep on. So, when no one is looking, we crawl into the display and get comfortable. It’s not that security is lax at the Guggenheim. …

See the slideshow of the World’s Top 25 Hotels. Who says there aren’t any surprises anymore? Sure, the 25 best hotels on the T+L 500—the annual list of the world’s top 500 properties, as chosen by Travel + Leisure readers—include many familiar names: Four Seasons, Oberoi, Ritz-Carlton, and Taj. There are also familiar places: former maharajah’s palaces in India, swanky city hotels in the U.S., and opulent game reserves in South Africa all scored high. But …

See our New York City’s Street Fashion slideshow.

See our slideshow for 9 Money-Saving Travel Tips. The fluctuations in the economy may change a lot of things, but one thing that remains the same is the desire to explore new places and experience new cultures. It’s just that now, when travelers set off on anything from an African safari to a weekend getaway, they’re a bit more conscious about their spending. Of course, we at travelandleisure.com encourage everyone to keep traveling. So we’ve come up with a can’t-miss …

See our slideshow of 2009 Travel Trends. In these tumultuous times, we return to the essential pleasures of travel, rediscovering classic destinations and old-fashioned manners, seeking out comfort and serenity and quiet. What’s old is new again this year. The shaky economy has lead to some drastic changes in the ways people travel, creating new breeds of travelers, like flashpackers . The flashier version of the backpacker values the same low-cost methods of traveling as the …

Hotels Susan Helstab, Executive Vice President of Marketing, Four Seasons “Our rates are our rates, and we don’t drop them. But we’re offering more packages with added value by throwing in a third or fourth night free, a spa credit, or breakfast—one of those things that everybody eats.” Restaurants Danny Meyer, CEO, Union Square Hospitality Group “People feel better when they go out to eat in a full place. I’m keeping my restaurants filled however I …

See our slideshow of the worst travel diseases—and how to avoid them. It seemed like a good idea at the time. After an inspiring day at Angkor Wat in Cambodia , I returned to my guesthouse to find locals sharing stories—and homemade rice wine. My instinct told me to stick with bottled beer, but their insistence wore me down. The wine tasted good and complemented their tales of Siem Reap . Feeling in tune with local life, I went to bed happy. Later in my trip, however, happiness …

See our video collection of the World’s Best Holiday Light Displays. Let’s face it: most of the things we love about the winter holidays—the family gatherings, the parties and overindulgent meals, the giving and receiving of gifts—are also pretty stressful. Many of us cross over into the New Year feeling as if we’ve just run a marathon: happy, but exhausted, and figuratively and literally spent. Maybe that’s why so many of us—all over the …

I am writing this letter from London, having spent the past two days at the annual World Travel Market fair, where government tourism representatives, airlines, outfitters, and hotel companies gather to present their latest offerings. Located at ExCeL, a hulking modern exhibition center in the Docklands area of London, WTM is always a challenging event. The traffic getting there and back is horrendous—this year especially so—and the ground one needs to cover for appointments and …

See our Colonial Williamsburg’s Family Holiday Fun slideshow. To call Jim McDonnell a Colonial Williamsburg junkie would be putting it mildly: he’s visited a full 151 times (yes, he keeps track). And though he’s come at all times of the year, some of his best memories are from the holiday season. In fact, his very first Williamsburg experience was over the Christmas holiday—in 1959. McDonnell’s not the only one drawn to Colonial Williamsburg during the holidays. …