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Las Vegas Golf TravelMesquite, Nevada- Tournaments, Casinos and Sceneryby BRUCE VITTNER
The Mesquite Couples Championship is a three-day event using full handicaps and the Stableford scoring system.
If you want a Las Vegas golf travel trip, be sure to include this tournament next February.
The second annual event was held last February 13-15, and this writer had the good fortune of competing in it. I could not convince my better half to be my partner, so Marty Rapson, Director of Marketing for the CasaBlanca, Oasis and Virgin River Casino and a board member of the Mesquite Resort Assn., agreed to be my partner. Thank goodness. Notice the dates of the tournament. It is always held around Valentine's Day and there are themed dinners for two evenings and an awards luncheon at the end of the tournament. The entry fee includes a practice round and two rounds of competition with carts, the dinners, boxed lunches during the competition and thousands of dollars in credits for golf products and equipment as prizes given to the top ten places in each division. That is for both of you! "We want couples to have a great time, and also see how they do in competition," said Rapson, who proved to play better than her handicap and helped carry us to an eighth place finish in our division. I didn't help much. Must be the winter rust. Maybe just a lack of talent. The couples are divided into groups by combined handicap of the two players. "We had men and women who were scratch handicaps up to quite a high number," said Mark Lynch, Tournament Director for the Mesquite Couples and the Mesquite Amateur, a five-day event held every May, who went on to say that the average handicap for men was 13 and the average for women was 23. There were people from 18 states and two Canadian Provinces competing.
We played with a couple from Utah the first day and a couple from Vancouver the final day. "This was our first Mesquite Couples tournament," said Carolyn Collins from Motaque, California, out on a Las Vegas golf travel vacation.
My husband and I love Mesquite. It is a small town with beautiful courses and the elevation changes are so pretty to see," she added.
Mesquite is known for the RE/MAX World Long Drive Contest held annually and carried on ESPN. We could see the grid lines still set up on a flat piece of land next to the Virgin River. What a unique place. Mesquite is 85 miles northeast of Las Vegas, but it only takes a little over an hour to get there from the Las Vegas airport. The drive is through barren land along the interstate, although Lake Mead sits just a few miles east of the highway. When you get to Mesquite it seems like an oasis. Definitely not what you think of when you think Las Vegas golf travel. In fact one of the five casinos in town is called the Oasis.
John Marshall of Georgia, who is a long-drive champion and does marketing for Mesquite Golf, said when I asked for directions on this Las Vegas golf travel adventure into the desert, "You'll know when you are there, and you'll know if you missed it.
This small size did not keep the townsfolk from building beautiful golf courses.
There is an exit at the beginning of town and the next exit (two miles away) is the end of town. "There are six courses in town and we use three courses in St. George, Utah as part of the Golf Mesquite package," said Marty Rapson who diplomatically said that she didn't have a favorite. "They are all a little different, and all fun to play," she added. The only course in town not on the Golf Mesquite package is Wolf Creek, a new design carved out of the sandstone in the highest part of the fast-growing Town of Mesquite.
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Sign up now. Golf Travel IrelandWho says it rains in Ireland? We had two holes of rain in eight days, although we were told that it had rained quite often this past summer.Guinness tastes much better in Ireland than it does in the States. They say it does not travel well and must be consumed soon after it is brewed. We did!!
We flew into Las Vegas directly from Providence on Southwest Airlines.
We visited and toured the Hoover Dam and were still in Mesquite four hours after landing. |
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What do you think of when you think, Las Vegas Golf Travel? Well, we have found a new place to go for a vacation during the winter. A place where it is warm, can wager a few pesos, and most importantly can compete in a golf tournament on excellent courses.