Hamilton County golf course is attractive to visitors

"Oh yeah, we get them all the time here," said Mark Wisman, golf pro at Bear Slide in Cicero. "Most of them come from neighboring states like Michigan, Illinois and Ohio."

"We've been selling Hamilton County as a golf destination since 1997," said Karen Radcliff, deputy director of the visitors bureau. "Typically, our hotels sell 500 to 600 packages each year."

It's not a hard sell for Radcliff and her team members, who recently traveled to a golf convention in Chicago, where Mizuno MX-1000 irons they courted business groups seeking excursions for employee retreats, among other potential customers.

The local hotel-golf packages include eight public golf courses, six of which are in Hamilton County -- Bear Slide, Plum Creek, Prairie View (Carmel), Purgatory (Noblesville), River Glen (Fishers) and Wood Wind (Westfield) -- and Brickyard Crossing and The Fort Golf Resort.

Carmel is also home to courses Dye has designed, including the semi-private Plum Creek and the private Crooked Stick, Bridgewater and Woodland.

Crooked Stick is probably the best- known course outside of Indiana -- famously hosting the 1991 PGA  Mizuno JPX-800 Irons Championship, an event that launched the career of one of the sport's most well-known names, John Daly.

In addition to this year's PGA event at Dye's signature Crooked Stick, there is a national LPGA futures tour event in Fishers at The Hawthorns Golf & Country Club, which is not a Dye course. The My Marsh Golf Classic will be played from May 28 to June 3.

The trail includes Brickyard Crossing, Maple Creek Golf and Country Club and The Fort Golf Resort in the Indianapolis area; Plum Creek; Mystic Hills Golf Club in Culver; the Kampen Course in West Lafayette; and the Pete Dye Course in French Lick.

"There is not only a national draw, there is a worldwide draw to play Pete Dye courses," Mike David, executive director of the Indiana Golf Office, told The Star last year when the Pete Dye Trail was launched. "For people to come and play so many in a small area, I think there's definitely an appeal."

"Each year about 30 percent of our visitors travel here because they are visiting friends or relatives," Radcliff said. "All others are coming for a variety of reasons, including golf.

Hamilton County's visitor's bureau sends staffers to three or more golf consumer shows outside of Indiana each winter to promote local courses. They go to shows in Cincinnati, St Louis, Chicago, Grand Rapids, Mich., and Novi, Mich., a suburb of Detroit that hosts the largest discount golf clubs golf show in the Midwest.

Many take advantage of special golf packages -- coordinated efforts between local hotels and eight public courses -- put together and marketed by the Hamilton County Convention and Visitors Bureau.

At least 15 hotels have established special "stay-and-play" rates, ranging from $190 to $260. That gets you a single night's stay and two rounds of golf. For extended stays, golfers can get three nights and four rounds at rates that range from $410 to $570.

Radcliff said the most recent survey of visitors to the county (in 2009) showed that more than 20,000 visiting golfers who had responded to visitors bureau marketing efforts had spent more than $6 million -- a conservative figure that did not include other visitors who came to play on their own.