Today, there‘s a golf resort seemingly in every state corner, yet southern California, southern Arizona and central Florida remain the most active hubs because of their respective climates. Check it out, but we suspect there‘s not a golf resort in Alaska.

California

The busiest locale in California for an extended golf holiday is the desert east of Los Angeles. Palms Springs, Cathedral City, La Quinta, Rancho Mirage, Palm Desert and Indians Wells are a stretch of desert towns on California‘s State Highway 111 that blend into each other like one continuous vacation strip, with resort hotels and golf courses all along the way.

Palm Springs was the desert hideaway for Hollywood stars in the 1950s and 1960s before the new wave of big­scale resorts and golf developments took over. Bob Hope was the honorary mayor for a while, and the main street is still called Dinah Shore Drive. There are well over 100 courses in "the desert” (as locals say) within a short drive of each other. One could spend a lifetime staying and playing here... and some people do.

The La Qunita Resort & Spa in Palm Springs is one of the most popular stops, because it offers guests everything from desert tours by jeep to art galleries, polo and five golf courses. With the Santa Rosa Mountains for a backdrop, La Quinta has a 640­room Spanish­style luxury hotel, though some guests are willing to pay more for a few nights in one of the original casitas built when the resort first opened in 1926.

La Qunita has five restaurants, a tennis club, multiple swimming pools and hot pools, and a spa specialising in treatments that combine traditional native American natural therapies with eastern holistic philosophy. As you do.

The golf courses include the Pete Dyedesigned Dunes and Mountain courses and the three PGA Tour courses: two at PGA West, conceived by Greg Norman and Jack Nicklaus respectively, and a third TPC Stadium course. All three together form the site of the Bob Hope Desert Classic. In Rancho Mirage further along the highway, the Westin Mission Hills Resort & Spa is a five­star desert retreat with a splendid 472­ room luxury hotel and spa. The complex comes with all the trimmings, including tennis courts, pools and a host of off­site activities from rock climbing to four­wheel­drive desert excursions. The spa is popular for its hot stone massage, although the most common treatments range from facials to the basic post­round rub down, perfect after a day on the golf course, even if you were riding about in a cart all day. Westin Mission Hills has two splendid courses, one by Gary Player and the other by Pete Dye.

The desert is only a two­hour drive from Los Angeles, so it makes a terrific weekend escape for anyone passing through on business. For travellers with more time on their hands and looking to experience another style of desert golf, where fairways are like green carpets laid out over sand and coyotes run wild, it‘s less than an hour‘s flight from LAX to Phoenix, Arizona.

Arizona

Whereas the southern Californian desert is strongly influenced by Los Angeles, Hollywood and Spanish traditions, Arizona­style is strictly cowboy­and­Indian. It‘s about 10­gallon hats and headbands, leather cowboy boots and moccasins. Cowboy and native American culture tastefully merge under a single roof at the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa on the Gila River Indian Reservation, a short drive south of Phoenix.

The architecture and interiors of this 500­room sanctuary take the heritage of the Gila River Indians for its primary theme. The resort is only a 30­minute drive from Phoenix Airport, but it‘s on a protected property where horses still run wild. As if to underscore the importance of horses and horsemanship for cowboys and Indians alike, the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass has its own equestrian centre, where guests commonly stay and ride, or learn to ride, as the case may be.

Of course there are pleasures of pools, jogging trails and walking tracks, tennis, and as you should expect, a spa. But if your journey is about golf, book a tee time at the Whirlwind Golf Club with its two, beautiful 18­hole courses: Devil‘s Claw and Cattail. They stretch out across the desert like green carpets, with the Sierra Estrella Mountains shaping the distant skyline.

The Boulders, so­named for the massive rocks that add tonnes (pun intended) of character to its rough, dry, beautiful landscape, is frequently ranked among the best golf resorts in the world. It‘s arguably the best golf resort in the southwest of the United States, 40 minute‘s driving time north of Phoenix.

Apart from having two unbelievably beautiful 18­hole golf courses, a North and a South course, The Boulders has a Golden Door Spa. Gold Door Spa, one of the original resort spas founded in northern California, has its own story to tell. Suffice to say for now that it remains the standard­bearer of high­end spas that have now become such a regular addition to luxury resorts.

For our part, after golf, we were happy with a simple massage and a brief spell in the steam room before heading off to one of the six restaurants and cafes on the property for drinks and dinner. Before we left we shopped at the El Pedregal boutique that specialises in the arts and crafts of the American southwest.

Florida

The one state that set the early standard for golf resorts and fun­in­the­sun holidays is Florida. Once famous for its orange groves and beaches, Florida now seems to have more resorts and golf courses than orange groves and beaches combined.

Much of the activity is in central Florida, in and around the booming city of Orlando, where there must be more hotels and golf courses per square mile than in any other region of the United States. Theme parks, namely Disney World and Universal Studios, are an important part of the story.

The theme parks, along with hotels, golf courses, restaurants and shopping centres, are so close together, many of them linked by an interstate motorway, that the very idea of spending your entire time on holiday inside an isolated, private resort, such as those in the Arizona desert, is ridiculous.

For devout golfers, the holiest approach, the one that demonstrates just how committed to the Church of Golf you are, is to play as many courses as possible within the shortest amount of time. Orlando has, we guess, more than 50 very fine courses within 16 kilometres of the city. To come and play only 18 holes in a day is sacrilege. You come here to play at least 36 a day, for at least three days straight. Buy the kids an all­day pass to Disney World and get on with it.

On that note, Disney World has five courses of its own that guests who stay at any one of its 20 themed resort hotels (the Polynesian, for example), can play at a reasonable cost, with carts and club hire included. In fact, competition among courses and hotels in central Florida is so great for families that Florida may be the most economical of all golf holiday spots, even if Mickey Mouse is not part of the plan.

For the more serious hack, Arnold Palmer‘s Bay Hill Golf Club & Lodge is one of the most popular places in the Orlando area for a long weekend with the sticks. Bay Hill has 27 holes built along the Butler Chain of Lakes. The downside is that only guests staying at the 70­room lodge can play there. But they come and stay because the golf deal often includes time at the Golf Academy to sharpen their swing and put themselves on the road to a lower handicap.

Elsewhere in "the Sunshine State,” the Amelia Island Plantation in northeastern Florida, about 45 minutes from Jacksonville and on the Atlantic coast, has four championship courses. The Amelia Inn & Beach Club has 250 luxury rooms and oceanfront villas. Golf packages include accommodation. The resort operates daily saltwater fishing trips for buddies after the complete package of golf, deep­sea fishing, whisky and a cigar.