CLIMATE-CONTROLLED GOLF

courses. Zen-like meditation services before tee time. And then there's the hot-stone massage...with heated golf balls.

If you're heading for a golf resort this spring, you may be in for a surprise. Driven by a flattening in participation and an overall slowdown in the industry, golf resorts are reinventing themselves as multipurpose luxury resorts, adding pampering touches for both golfers and nongolfers alike. That means GPS-enabled golf carts, outdoor massages overlooking the course and, in the case of The Wigwam Golf Resort & Spa in Phoenix, a two-acre combination putting green and leisure garden complete with a teepee bar and lounge.

In their attempt to become more appealing to more people, some resorts are also going in another direction easier. Call it the Mulligan makeover: By adding an extra set of tees that are closer to the green, resorts can reduce the length of the course by as much as 3,000 yards for short ball hitters. "We're stretching courses on both ends for the skill players and for new players," notes Greg Muirhead, president of the American Society of Golf Course Architects.

But all these changes come at a price, and we don't mean greens fees. Scratch golfers and weekend hackers alike are having to adjust to certain unexpected drawbacks of the new golf vacation. For one thing, in their effort to maximize the rounds played, many resorts are shuttling golfers on and off the course faster. The Four Seasons Resort Scottsdale at Troon North has enlisted a team of "golf rangers" who police the course and tell parties to play faster if at any point they slip behind the course's pace of four and a half hours for a full round. Those GPS-enabled golf carts play a role here too they may be great for tooling down the fairway, but they also serve as a mapping device for course managers. Knowing the exact location of every cart at all times, they can easily find the bottlenecks and dispatch rangers to speed up the game or let the next foursome play through. At Brickyard Crossing Golf Resort in Indianapolis, the GPS screens even have a display that pops up when golfers dip too far behind the course's suggested pace of four hours, 40 minutes per round. "It's a distance-measuring device, but it's also a management tool," says Mike Hughes, head of the National Golf Course Owners Association.

Some resorts are going one step further and charging for the service. During the summer, the Desert Springs JW Marriott Resort & Spa charges an extra $5 to have its golf carts' GPS units turned on a fee that didn't sit well with Greg White. The Hillsborough, N.J., wedding planner found the charge offensive, especially on top of the course's $100 greens fee. "Charge me $105 and tell me it's included," he says. But opposing the fee on principle wasn't so easy. The resort had gotten rid of its traditional yardage markers altogether. Lacking even old-fashioned orientation, White had to rely on the activated GPS screen of another group in his party to get through the course.

To some degree, the souped-up golf-resort movement is one born of desperation. After a boom in the late 1990s fueled by both the dot-com economy and the Tiger Woods phenomenon, golf participation recently has been flatter than a putting green. According to the National Golf Foundation, the number of frequent adult golfers fell by 9% from 2000 to 2004, after increasing 26% from 1994 to 2000. At the same time, the number of U.S. golf courses has grown by 5%, or 720 courses. The one-two punch of slowing participation and increased competition has seen golf resorts suffer.

Adding insult to injury, all of this has happened at the same time that the overall travel industry has rebounded sharply. Not content to sit on their sand traps as more broad-based resorts capture the surge in business, golf resorts think they've come up with the answer: reinvent themselves to appeal to all levels of golfers and offer plenty for nonduffers, too.

Perhaps no other resort has gone to the extremes of The Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Ariz. At its 20-room spa, golfers can get a postcourse rubdown or sign up for a special golf fitness program designed to increase driving distance. Golf carts, meanwhile, are wired with full climate control: In the blazing-hot summer months, they blast cool, dry air to the back of the neck, making a 105-degree day in Phoenix feel more like 65; in the winter, the system directs heat to golfers' hands, ears and other extremities. The driving range? That's air-conditioned too. And after the resort staff started using Segway motor devices as a way to get around, General Manager Bruce Lange approached the makers of the device about a special version for golfers. The Westin Kierland now has eight golf Segways, with beefier tires and extended-range batteries, that golfers can use instead of carts to cruise the course.

Lange says he made the enhancements as a way to stand out from the competition: There are more than 200 courses in golf-happy Scottsdale, and the Westin opened in 2002, the same year as the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass Resort & Spa and the JW Marriott Desert Ridge, both mega-golf resorts within putting distance. "To have anything other than average results, we have to do things differently," he says. Besides, Lange adds, for most of the resort's golfers, "it's not how well they played, but how much fun they had." Indeed, golf and spa services are just the start. The Westin also has a massive pool and water park with a water slide, sandy beach and 900-foot "flowing" river that snakes through reproductions of rock formations. And, of course, there are restaurants eight of them, as well as a bagpiper who performs every night at sunset.

Naturally, vacationers pay for all of this: At the Westin, rates in high season can hit $549 a night; a week for a family of four even during the off season can easily cost $4,000 and that's before spa treatments, kids' activities or, yes, even any golf. At the Sheraton Wild Horse Pass, high-season rates have jumped 49% since 2002, to $489. Greens fees are on the rise too, costing $425 per person at famed Pebble Beach and $270 at the American Club in Kohler, Wis.

But by any measure, the high prices and added extras are having their intended effect: beefing up the bottom line of struggling courses. At the Westin, the number of rounds played last June typically a dead month increased by 25% over the previous year. When the Kaanapali Beach Resort in Maui reopened its South Course last fall after a redesign, one of the biggest changes was the addition of a fourth set of forward tees that play roughly 2,000 yards shorter than the course's most-challenging tees. Already, the resort has seen an uptick in the number of couples playing together and children playing with their parents. "We wanted a course that was as playable as possible," says Scott Ashworth, the course's head pro.

Not surprisingly, the success is prompting resort managers to think about what else they can do. Resorts are adding more golf-related spa treatments; the Four Seasons has started offering Troon North's signature treatment a hot-stone massage with heated golf balls at some of its other properties. Lange of the Westin is hoping to add a computerized swing-analysis machine in the pro shop, and lately he's been mulling over the idea of handing out personal range finders to each golfer.

And while they may have the occasional beef or bogey for the most part golfers seem to like the pampering. Even Greg White, who complained about the $5 GPS fee, admits a little commercialism is a small price to pay for the VIP treatment. Last August he played a round of golf at the Arroyo Golf Club at Red Rock in Las Vegas, and even though he had teed off at 7:45 a.m., it was still blazing hot on the greens. Fortunately, golf butlers were driving around the course handing out frozen towels and cold water with lemon slices. To White, the extra touch made all the difference. "It was almost like being in a spa," he says.