You Can Live Like a Golf Pro -- for $9K

Photo: reynoldsplantation.com

Most golfers have daydreamed about enjoying the sweet life of a PGA Tour pro.

We gloss over the endless hours of repetitive practice, the long odds, the anxiety, the years in Podunk minor-league towns, the left-to-right downhill knee-knockers on the 18th hole on Friday just to make the cut and get paid for the week.

In our fantasy, it's all Mercedes courtesy cars and oversized checks.

It is a fantasy, after all. But it's a fantasy that you can make almost real starting early next spring at Reynolds Plantation outside Atlanta.

The highly regarded resort community on picturesque Lake Oconee has just opened as an East Coast branch of "the Kingdom," TaylorMade-Adidas Golf's whiz-bang, Tour pros-only club-testing-and-fitting facility with headquarters in Carlsbad, Calif.

Beginning in April, for $9,000 plus taxes and tips, you can spend three nights and two days not just being treated like the pros, but also being in their exalted company.

Days in Paradise

It's called "the TaylorMade Tour Experience at Reynolds Plantation," and here's how it works: You arrive at Reynolds and head to the Kingdom for an exhaustive club-testing and custom-fitting session for a full set of new TaylorMade sticks, from driver to putter.

The fitting employs a state-of-the-art motion-analysis system -- yes, the same one deployed on staff pros like Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose, Vaughn Taylor and Gary McCord, who have all visited the Reynolds facility -- that uses nine high-speed cameras, a computer and a launch monitor to collect and crunch any and all relevant information about your swing, warts and all.

Then you and no more than five other participants enjoy an elegant dinner with a TaylorMade tour pro -- David Toms, Joe Ogilvy, Kenny Perry, Scott Verplank and Hale Irwin are among those set to participate -- at your five-star accommodations, the Ritz-Carlton Lodge at Reynolds Plantation. (I was there a few years back and in my mind's tongue can still taste the superb food at the onsite Georgia's restaurant, and I also remember fondly the gracious Southern hospitality and service on offer.)