Each spring on a tiny island in Northern Greenland, the World Ice Golf Championship lures hardy fanatics for a chance to tee off atop moving ice floes in the High Arctic tundra. The annual event takes place in Santa Claus territory—370 miles north of the Arctic Circle, near the town of Uummannaq, where glaciers groan and icebergs bob around a nine-hole course cut from the snow and ice just before play commences. Since the greens are white, the balls are painted red.
For more information: World Ice Golf Championship
America's northernmost official golf course, the USGA-rated North Star Golf Club in Fairbanks, Alaska, doesn't officially open until mid-May—when the snow has melted and the ground has begun to thaw. But that doesn't mean there aren't a few hardcore Alaskans who head out with their shovels and clubs for a few blustery rounds in the dead of winter. A subterranean layer of permafrost that exists year round in this part of the world makes for a wildly undulating terrain that is perpetually evolving. And a local rule at North Star dictates that if a fox or raven snatches up a golf ball, a replacement ball can be dropped at the scene of the crime, sans penalty.
For more information: North Star Golf Club
Make your way to the small mining town of Coober Pedy in South Australia, where there's not a blade of grass or a stitch of greenery in sight at the Coober Pedy Opal Fields Golf Club. Opal mining is the chief business here, and most residents live in a subterranean world of tunnels and caves to escape the Outback's searing temperatures. The golf course itself is basically one enormous sand trap that must be oiled with grease lest it blow away in the dry desert winds, and golfers tote swatches of faux grass from hole to hole to ease teeing off.
An exotic par-72 challenge situated in the small mining town of Ba-Phalaborwa in South Africa, the Hans Merensky Golf Course shares a common boundary with Kruger National Park. Free movement of wildlife between the two areas means it's not unlikely to encounter elephants, impalas, waterbuck or giraffes in your line of play.
For more information: Hans Merensky Golf Course
When it comes to sheer scale and diversity of play, the world's largest golf course complex awaits at Mission Hills Golf Club in China, where 216 holes stretch across territory in Shenzhen and Dongguan. With 12 resort and championship courses designed by the likes of Nick Faldo, Greg Norman and David Duval, Mission Hills is serious sensory overload for golf fanatics. Additionally, there's a five-star resort, scores of tennis courts and fine restaurants.
For more information: Mission Hills Golf Club
The antithesis of Australia's arid environment awaits across the Tasman Sea in New Zealand, where you can slice the Southern Hemisphere skies in the thermal hotspot of Rotorua. The Rotorua Golf Club features an 18-hole, links-style, par-69 course, as well as a nine-hole course where bubbling mud pools, steam vents, steaming creeks and rushing geysers make for otherworldly obstacles.
For more information: Rotorua Golf Club
Indulge your cowboy golf fantasies at the deservingly named Lajitas, The Ultimate Hideout—a 25,000-acre resort isolated in western Texas, some 300 miles from El Paso along the banks of the Rio Grande. The 19-hole course dubbed "the Ambush" features four holes set on an island in the Rio Grande and a bonus hole that involves a shot across the mighty river into Mexico—making Lajitas the world's only trans-national golf course.
For more information: Lajitas
Due to open in fall 2008, the 18-hole, par-72 Nullarbor Links golf course, in the Australian Outback, will stretch for roughly 800 miles along the desolate Eyre Highway between Kalgoorlie in Western Australia and Ceduna in South Australia.
For more information: Nullarbor Links