If you tell a friend you are taking a golf trip to Myrtle Beach, the question that typically follows is, “Where are you playing?”

For Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Championship players the answer to that query is, “The best courses Myrtle Beach has to offer.”

Course assignments won’t be made until August, but the list of layouts competing in this year’s event is complete and it reads like a Who’s Who of Grand Strand golf.

Tidewater, King’s North, Grande Dunes, Leopard’s Chase, Glen Dornoch, Rivers Edge and True Blue are just a sampling of the courses that will again return to the World Am rotation. (View a complete course list)

“The Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Championship takes great pride in making sure players get to play some of the nation’s best courses,” Dave Macpherson, the tournament director, said. “The experience on the golf course is at the heart of what makes this event special and the participation of Myrtle Beach’s best courses is a big reason why.”

The two biggest additions to this year’s lineup are the Love Course at Barefoot Resort and the TPC of Myrtle Beach, which will be hosting all four days of the tournament.

The Love Course, which has been ranked among America’s 100 Greatest Public Courses, is hosting the tournament for the first time, joining the other three layouts at Barefoot as part of the World Am team. The Love Course has been one of Myrtle Beach’s most popular courses since it opened 10 years ago, and is famously home to the faux ruins of an old plantation home.

The TPC is a former host of the World Championship Playoff and unquestionably one of the area’s best. The home course of PGA Tour star Dustin Johnson and one of only 17, 5-star layouts in America, TPC will significantly enhance the World Am’s course lineup.

Whether you are registering for your first tournament or preparing for your 27th Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Championship, everyone harbors dreams of winning their flight and advancing to the Championship Round, an 18-hole shootout that crowns the tournament champion.

In 2010, the winner will again hoist the World Am trophy at the Dunes Golf & Beach Club, Myrtle Beach’s most revered course. The Dunes Club, a member of every substantive list of America’s top 100 public courses, will host Friday’s Championship Round.

“We are looking forward to crowning our champion at the Dunes Club again this year,” Dave Macpherson, the World Am’s tournament director, said. “The Dunes Club has a unique place in Myrtle Beach golf history and it’s an ideal venue to cap off the World Am.”

Opened in 1948, the Dunes Club, a Robert Trent Jones design, is just yards from the Atlantic Ocean and is Myrtle Beach’s most tradition-filled course. It has hosted the Senior Tour Championship, the U.S. Women’s Open, the finals of the PGA Tour’s Q-School and several prominent amateur tournaments.

A 4.5-star course, the Dunes Club is a traditional golf course and one of the Myrtle Beach area’s most popular layouts. The most recognizable hole at the Dunes Club is No. 13, a long, par 5 that plays around Lake Singleton and is affectionately known as Waterloo.

The course lineup for the 2010 World Amateur Handicap Championship is the best in tournament history, and here is a look at this year’s list by the numbers:

55 – Courses hosting the 2010 World Am.

38 – Host courses that have earned at least 4 stars.

29 – North Strand courses hosting the tournament.

17 – South Strand courses hosting the tournament.

10  – Courses that have earned Top 100 honors (Dye Course at Barefoot, Fazio Course at Barefoot, Love Course at Barefoot, Caledonia, Dunes Club, Grande Dunes, King’s North, Rivers Edge, Tidewater, True Blue)

9 – South Strand courses hosting the World Am.

7 – Courses that play along the Intracoastal Waterway (Arrowhead, Norman Course, Glen Dornoch, Grande Dunes, Myrtlewood – Palmetto, Tidewater, Waterway Hills)

5 – Number of World Am host courses designed by Dan Maples, Tom Jackson and Gene Hamm, the architectural leaders of this year’s event.

4 – Number of Arnold Palmer designs in this year’s event (King’s North, West Course and Southcreek at Myrtle Beach National, and Rivers Edge)

1 – The number of people who will conquer Myrtle Beach’s best courses and be crowned 2010 Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Champion.

For the Sports Illustrated Golf Group it is a homecoming and an opportunity to broaden its appeal to amateur golfers.

For Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday and the World Amateur Handicap Championship it is an opportunity to partner with one of golf and sports leading brands.

For World Amateur players a new title sponsor provides the knowledge that the game’s leading media company is dedicated to improving golf’s largest single-site tournament.

Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday officials announced Wednesday at Pine Lakes Country Club that the Sports Illustrated Golf Group, which includes Golf Magazine, Golf.com and Sports Illustrated’s Golf Plus, is the new title sponsor of the World Amateur Handicap Championship.

Myrtle Beach Golf Holiday introduced the Sports Illustrated Golf Group as the new title sponsor of the World Am in a press conference at Pine Lakes Country Club. The event's new name is the Golf.com World Amateur Handicap Championship. Enjoy a press conference photo gallery.

Sports Illustrated Golf Group President Dick Raskopf talks about the excitment of joining the World Am family!

We are overwhelmed with the wonderful responses from our fellow golf addicts. Thank you and for those of you who have left your phone numbers and invites to play, trust me, if we are anywhere near you, we will call and set up a game!

Now I just need an Admin to help me set this up along with our RV camps! Some have asked about our preliminary route. We are right now on the gulf, heading west through Baton Rouge, through Houston, San Antonio, so that we can spend Thanksgiving with my family in Redlands, CA. We will also spend some time visiting with our San Diego friends.

After that, the trip really begins with no real agenda but to stay warm and play golf. We'll be working our way toward south Florida after Thanksgiving so we'll be taking the southern route. We will hit the Carolinas in the Spring since I am playing at Rock Barn (Hickory) in an invitational. Then we'll head north up the east coast and then work our way west along the northern route during the summer. In the Fall we'll come down the west coast hitting courses in Washington, Oregon, and the parts of CA we'll miss this time. If our home in North Myrtle Beach has sold by then, we'll hopefully head to our new home yet to be determined.

Y'all have given me some great ideas to put a travel plan together. Our main goal with this year long golf extravaganza is to find the perfect golf club for our lifestyle. We're looking for somewhere warm most of the year, near water (fresh or salt), private, reasonable initiation, walkable, and either a cart plan or trail fee. Before hitting the road I was playing 7-10 times a week so paying cart fees got to be a problem.

And yes, I know I need a 12 step program for this addiction of mine. If you know of THE spot for folks like us that has a fun active membership, please send those ideas asap.

Thank you from the bottom of my spikes!!!

Juanita Rosenfeld

Anyone wishing to reach Juanita directly can email her at peanut_rosenfeld@hotmail.com.

The idea of a one-year, cross country golf trip is merely a dream for most of us, but for Juanita Rosenfeld, a World Am player, it’s a reality.

Last month, Rosenfeld and her fiancé, Mike Evans, began a year-long trek across America in a 41-foot motor home with their golf clubs, a road map, internet access and two dogs. Nearly everything that happens between the Atlantic and Pacific has yet to be determined.

Other than a few course suggestions received from playing partners during this year’s World Am, Rosenfeld and Evans are a blank slate. But they are looking for suggestions.

If you’d like to recommend a course or possibly play a round with them, Rosenfeld is happily accepting suggestions on her blog, where she is also chronicling the couple’s adventures.  

Here in tournament headquarters, we are envious of Rosenfeld’s adventure but wish her well!

Linda Fuller of Richmond, Texas, shot a net 66 to win the World Championship Playoff at the Dunes Golf & Beach Club Friday afternoon. Fuller’s victory capped the 26th annual PGA TOUR Superstore World Amateur Handicap Championship, an event that began with 3,060 people on Monday morning.

The World Championship Playoff consisted of all flight winners and ties, a total of 75 golfers. There was a three-way tie for second place. Treg Hallman, Jill Ford and Thomas Wagner all finished with a net 68. Full Leaderboard

Fuller, the third consecutive woman to win the title, played to a 13 handicap in Friday’s round. Fuller’s husband, Roger, is one of 14 players to have played in all 26 World Amateurs.

“I’m pretty flabbergasted,” an emotional Fuller said. “It’s been a lot of fun. You like to have a goal and you work towards it. It’s the fulfillment of plan when it all comes together and it works.”

Phillip Sanders and Wayne Hudson shot a net 135 but were pushed to a sudden death playoff before winning the U.S. Qualifier for International Pairs Championship, and along with it a trip to St. Andrews, Scotland to compete in the IP World Championship.

Sanders and Hudson recorded a par and bogey on the Dunes Club’s famed 13th hole, while their opponents dunked the ball in Lake Singleton.

Fuller’s victory concluded a week that featured near perfect weather over the tournament’s last four days. Temperatures along the Gran d Strand never got above the low 80s as nearly 3,100 players from 49 states and 20 foreign countries participated in the 26th annual event.