Golf Dreams Can Come True
On This Fabulous Golf Cruise To Asia
Crystal Cruises has just made one of my biggest golf fantasy's possible. How? By offering an exclusive, 11-day, Golf Themed cruise itinerary to Asia on one of the most luxurious cruise ships ever built – the Crystal Symphony, a 50,000 ton, 922 guest, six-star beauty. Golfers never had it so good!
I love Asia but have not had the opportunity to travel there since the late sixties. I would dearly love to remedy that and have mounted a campaign to accompany this special journey into the heart of Asia, Hong Kong to Singapore, departing April 20, 2009. It promises to be the (golf) trip of a lifetime – and from my perspective, especially meaningful. I would marvel at all the changes and appreciate (as an avid golfer) how the orient has embraced the game of golf – but that's not the half of it!
Colin Montgomerie Brings First Class Golf To Asia
I didn't realize Colin Montgomery was a golf course designer – and a darn good one from the looks of it, until I found out about this wonderful golf cruise to Asia on the Crystal Symphony – your home while cruising in Asia. The ship makes a stop in Vietnam where golfers have the opportunity to play the just-opened Montgomerie Links , situated within sight of the famed China Beach, with views of the South China Sea, Marble Mountain and just minutes from DaNang.
"Monty" as he affectionately referred to by his legion of fans is hugely popular in Europe and Asia where his unique style is appreciated on an international scale. I emailed the man himself, the guy who I feel is personally responsible for what feels like a hundred U.S. Ryder Cup Team losses over the last decade (man – that dude can putt!) to ask him if he ever considered designing a golf course in the States.(no response to date)
From the look of what he has done in these countries, Ireland, China, Wales, Maylasia, Turkey, Bahrain, and especially Vietnam, this life-long amateur golfer happily volunteers his home state of Arizona for the first Montgomerie Links designed golf course built (as far as I know) in the United States! (real golfers here love Monty!) I will never forget his singles match with the late Payne Stewart at the 1999 Ryder Cup at Brookline CC. The drunks were on Monty that day pretty bad as I recall, heck maybe for the whole tournament, the thing I remember most is how he handled it so gracefully and kept on playing his best even after the Cup was already lost to the U.S. side. We lost Payne a little more than a month later.
Believe it or not there are links-style golf courses in Arizona, maybe not in the traditional sense where in the British Isles, for example, a links course would be located along a body of water. We make up for that by having no shortage of sand in the Sonoran Desert, a feature that Monty seems to favor in his designs. I anxiously await Mr. Montgomeries' reply and will update this blog in a new post.
What really grabbed me about this particular itinerary (other than the fact that it's a golfer's dream cruise, Hong Kong to Singapore -wow!) was the fact that it stops in Vietnam. The fact that I am a Vietnam veteran is not the point here. What is more relevant is that after just a few minutes of research on the Internet I discovered some interesting information – actually one of life's curious coincidences. Monty's course near DaNang, located just off the famed China Beach might have been built (partially) on top of the very spot where I was wounded as a marine in 1969! Can you fathom that? Picture this: A Saturday in 2009, having left the Crystal Symphony in harborbeen transferred to Monty's latest, Montgomerie Linksteeing off on #7 at Monty's links, a calm and peaceful, sunny day on the links in Vietnam? Huh? I stripe a drive right down the middle of the fairway, in the shadow of Marble Mountain, not realizing that under my feet may be the exact spot where I lay wounded in another dimension. Gives me the shivers!
You can read all about that and get the details on the Asia Golf Cruise by viewing the latest post on LowCarb Cruising where I describe this fantastic cruise and the related topics to my tour in Vietnam.
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