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"FacebookPinterest\n\nListen, a famous golf resort with a golf-themed tavern and a golf-themed lodge packed with\u2014you guessed it\u2014golfers is cool if you're 65 years  old and blowing through your retirement money with your snowbird friends. Otherwise, no. What you want is to play a round with your buddies, tear up the town together, and wake up early to do it again. You want restaurants serving non-golfers, hotel lobbies packed with non-guests, and bars teeming with non-bros (i.e., beautiful women). All of which  means planning  a trip that leads with the city and still delivers on  the links. This is our guide to the three best itineraries for  a golf weekend  that's about a whole lot more than just playing golf.\n\nWhere the  Nineteenth Hole Has Michelin Stars \n\nSan Francisco, California\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nNice view: Hotel Vitale\n\nAs with everything in this town, the thrill  comes from proximity:  It's all about the  ease with which one Priuses from bay-windowed bungalow to a first tee framed by cypresses in less  time than it takes to finish a morning bun from Tartine Bakery. First stop is TPC Harding Park, a maze of emerald acreage  just across a lake from the city's famed private course, The Olympic Club. (No tourists allowed.) Luckily, Harding Park shares Olympic's  dip-diving contours, elevation surges, panoramic views, spongy greens, and salty breezes, making  it SF's top city-run course. You'll jam through your  morning round by early afternoon,  in time to down sea creatures at Swan Oyster Depot or burritos at La Taqueria.\n\nWake up the  next morning and hit hilly Presidio Golf Course, built in 1895 and mostly played straight up or straight down\u2014seldom will you find a flat lie  or a boring view.   \n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nPre-round nourishment at Tartine Bakery The primo photo op comes on the par-5 ninth hole, which  is downwind enough to give you a legit eagle opportunity. Whip out your phone, frame the rotunda of the Emanu-El temple behind the green,  and take the picture while you're still smiling\u2014before you yank your 3-wood into the parking lot.\n\nAfterward, venture from your downtown hotel (maybe the  airy, Zen-ish  Hotel Vitale or the Philippe Starck-designed Clift) to dinner at State Bird Provisions, with  its signature fried quail and dim-sum-style seafood carts.  If you're feeling  pasta instead, nowhere's better  than Flour + Water, Thomas McNaughton's shrine to those  two ingredients. In either case, you'll want to wrap up  your evening in the Mission District.  We like Zeitgeist for  the cheap beers to help you forget that your flight home  leaves in six hours.\n\nThe Only Handicap Is Your Hangover\n\nMiami, Florida\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nWhile you're booking your  morning round at Miami Beach Golf Club, the voice on the other end of the phone will warn you not to tee off too early: \"Remember, you'll be in South Beach.\" Which is plenty evident throughout all eighteen holes at MBGC, where beachfront hotels jag the horizon like broken pieces of sidewalk chalk. Picking a line off the tee on 15? Aim at The Raleigh (and then stay there for the night). MBGC shows an impeccable face year-round\u2014every flower in bloom, electric-blue lakes shimmering, and seashore paspalum greens that run as smooth as if they've just been Zambonied. Like its less pricey sister, Normandy Shores Golf Club, MBGC is a golfer's oasis\u2014an island within the island.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nJust one of the many ways Yardbird does fried chicken\n\nIn the evening, switching gears  takes no more than an ocean dip or a couple of laps in the Raleigh pool, and then maybe something from the martini bar off the lobby or a mojito on the leafy patio.\n\nFirst stop for dinner is Yardbird Southern Table Bar, where fried chicken stars (with waffles and watermelon at one end of the menu and pepper-jellied biscuits at the other). Meanwhile, a salad of Brussels-sprout leaves cools you down, Skynyrd plays on the stereo, and a small pot of macaroni tastes like five full wheels of cheese have been melted on top. Yardbird has been nominated for three James Beard Awards, and its familiar aesthetic is a welcome middle ground before the Miami mainlining you'll experience later over drinks at Bleau Bar, the lobby perch at  the Fontainebleau Miami Beach (of first-scene-in-Goldfinger fame). There you'll swill alongside the deeply unbuttoned bros and heel-hobbling babes who would be in Vegas  if it were $400 closer. The vibe can skew as cheesy as that macaroni, but this is why you're in Miami.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nFreehand redefines hostels.\n\nThe next round's  a causeway away  at Crandon Golf on Key Biscayne, where mangroves border oceanfront holes populated by long-billed tropical birds. Opt for a forecaddie like Nikos Markellos, who makes the rounds in Michigan during the summers and helps out hacks like you and your buddies during the winter\u2014golf's migrant worker. After tipping out Nikos, dress like you're heading to a Yeah Yeah Yeahs gig and stop by The Broken Shaker at Freehand, Miami Beach's high-end hostel. (This is the place to stay if you've got a golfing foursome; four-bed\"quads\" go for as little as $120 a night.) Order some cocktails, grab a table by the pool, and explain to the women you've met why, after a weekend in Miami, your farmer's tan is even more pronounced than when you arrived.\n\nBands, Barbecue, and Bunkers\n\nAustin, Texas\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nRainey Street beers under a Texas sky.\n\nEven from the steps of the Texas State Capitol or the sidewalk in front of The Driskill\u2014the oldest, Texas-iest, most-beloved-by-LBJ hotel in town\u2014it's easy to spot where the great golf's gonna be: out there in Austin's rollicking  Hill Country.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nLBJ was here: The Driskill \n\nThere's a couple of ways to do this. One option is booking the classic tracks at Barton Creek Resort &amp;amp; Spa. Fazio Foothills and Fazio Canyons are two of Texas's highest-rated public courses, and they roll through live oaks, limestone, and waterfalls just above the city. (The catch: It's easiest to get on the courses if you stay at Barton Creek\u2014but from there, you won't have strolling access to downtown nightlife.) Alternatively, there's the pair of publics deeper into the hills: Avery Ranch and Falconhead (where,  in true Austin fashion, CCR and Hendrix were on speakers pointed toward  the first tee when  we pulled up).  Both have dramatic panoramas, oak-lined fairways, and wind-tunnel challenges  that define the Texas golf you're after.\n\nRegardless of where you play, you're eating tacos all day every day: breakfast tacos pre-first tee from Maudie's or Tacodeli; lunch tacos near UT at Torchy's. Then switch it up at dinner. You have two can't-miss destinations. First: Uchiko, which delivers sushi dishes as flamboyant and flavorful as those at any coastal restaurant. Second: Barley Swine,\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nOrder a beer for your cook at Barley Swine. the kind of place that has the Drive soundtrack on the stereo and lets  you buy $1 beers  for the kitchen staff.  The entire menu features no more than a dozen small plates on any given night, which means any party larger than two can order the complete nose-to-tail works of the place.\n\nPay your tab  and head to Rainey Street, where a  block of old houses have been converted into bars (like Banger's and Lustre Pearl) with living rooms, backyards, fire pits, and views of the  city skyline. At night's end, grab one more drink in the verdant, frosty-lit courtyard  at Hotel San Jos\u00E9\u2014 a converted motel on South Congress, the place to stay. It's got all those touches that make you feel like you're living in an issue of GQ: Malin+Goetz soap and shampoo, Geneva alarm clocks, and (of course) that digital mix of homegrown Austin bands.\n\n Sidenote: The Country's Most Obvious Golf Destination Just Got Obvious-er\n\n Hawaii\n\nFacebookPinterestFacebookPinterest\n\nBev Gannon's Hali'imaile General Store.\n\n Practically since that bracelet of volcano peaks breached the surface of the Pacific, Hawaii has led with location. Makes sense that golfers would set their sites there, and non-golfers, too, as options for the alt-itinerary have obviously long been in abundance. This is about something else: like San Francisco, Austin, and Miami, there's a way to do Hawaii that's food first, golf second. Start with places like Bev Gannon's Hali'imaile General Store on the Upcountry slopes of Maui's Haleakala Crater. You play Wailea in the morning before heading to lunch or dinner in the weightless-seeming dining room of this former pineapple plantation five-and-dime. If you're up north, it's Star Noodle in Lahaina\u2014the Momofuku-ish mash-up (Korean, Thai, Filipino) joint opened by Top Chef: Seattle finalist Sheldon Simeon a couple years ago. This pairs with the Kapalua Bay and Plantation courses nearby. (The Plantation's the PGA Tour's punishing curtain-raiser, host of the Tournament of Champions each January, and good for those who want highest marks for effort; the Bay's the one that's actually fun to play.) Island hopping to Kaua'i for the second half of the run, book a table at Merriman's Fish House, in the south, after a round at Poipu Bay\u2014longtime site of the PGA Grand Slam of Golf. \n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nHawaiian Airlines has rolled out direct flights from New York. And finally, on O'ahu, on your way out, hit Town in Honolulu\u2014chef Ed Kenney was a James Beard semifinalist this year\u2014after a round at Ko'olau, carved from the rainforests to the north. Hawaii's a long way to go for golf\u2014though it's a breezy, well-serviced trek with Hawaiian Airline's non-stops from New York\u2014but the one-for-one complements of extraordinary courses and meals argue more convincingly than ever for the getaway. Even if you're just thinking about a (super-generous, extended) weekend in step with the others here."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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