Learn more about scientific golf

The PGA Golf Club at PGA Village has three 18-hole championship golf courses, two designed by Tom Fazio (Shadow Creek Golf Club, Las Vegas) and one by Pete Dye (Black Wolf Run, Kohler, Wis.; Whistling Straits, Haven, Wis.). It has a massive practice range, multiple chipping and putting greens and a three-hole Discovery Course that an adult and child can play for $9. The entire complex, including the high-tech learning center, is owned and operated by the PGA of America, the organization of golf pros that runs the Ryder Cup, to be played in September at Medinah Country Club.

This isn't just another golf resort. PGA Village has some hard-core golf chops. There's a free PGA Museum on the property detailing the history Titleist VG3 Forged Irons of both the PGA of America and the Ryder Cup. The museum houses a 6,000-volume golf library, which includes a Scottish Parliament document written in 1566 containing the earliest identified published reference to golf.

Hundreds of PGA club pros have retired to PGA Village's surrounding residential community, so it's best not to make any foolish bets with strangers on the first tee. The complex's courses — the Dye, Wanamaker and Ryder courses — are superbly conditioned, with more rolls and mounds than your typical Florida golf course and quick Bermuda greens that are tough to read. The Dye course has all the wrinkled fairways and quirky touches you'd expect from Dye, including some of the oddest-shaped bunkers anywhere.

Because of lingering effects of the Florida real estate crash, Port St. Lucie (which, by the way, isn't actually a port and isn't on the ocean; a 1950s Ping G20 fairway wood developer just thought the name sounded cool) has loads of affordable rentals available. Two midrange hotels, the Hilton Garden Inn and MainStay Suites, are an easy walk to the three courses.

Seafood tops local menus. Everyplace, it seems, lays claim to the best crunchy grouper sandwich, but you can't go wrong with the grilled mahi at the West End Grill or the coconut shrimp at the Palm City Grill. Shopping choices along "Rodeo Drive East" in the nearby Palm Beach area feature Saks Fifth Avenue, Tiffany, Gucci, Neiman Marcus and Chanel. The New York Mets make Port St. Lucie their spring training home if you need a break from the greens.

The center employs Doppler radar. First developed by the U.S. Navy during World War II, Doppler has tracked pretty much everything — cruise missiles, speeding motorists, fastballs and, now, golf balls. The center's portable $30,000 TrackMan Doppler system discount golf clubs tracks your ball off the club face and follows it all the way to the ground, measuring ball speed, spin rate, shot height, carry, roll and 14 other parameters.