(MONEY Magazine) – It's 9:50 on a crisp May morning. I'm standing, driver in hand, on the first tee of the River Course at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va., one of the finest golf courses in the country. Images of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Tiger Woods flash before my eyes. Sadly, I'm the only one reminded of these golfing greats: My opening drive soars a woeful 160 yards before slicing sharply to the right and landing in the rough.

Luckily for me, this isn't the Michelob Championship, the 38th stop on the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Tour, which is scheduled to be played at Kingsmill in October. No, this is the fourth installment on a different sort of golf circuit: the two-year-old Amateur Golf Tournaments (AGT) Tour, whose mission is to give amateur golfers a sense of what it's like to play on the pro tour.

Played on world-class resort courses throughout the U.S.--including several, such as Kingsmill and Pebble Beach, that are home to professional tournaments (see the box on page B16)--the AGT Tour is the latest development in one of the fastest-growing vacation pursuits in the U.S.: golf travel. Although the number of golfers in the U.S. has remained stable at about 25 million for several years, the number of duffers who combine vacations and the links is on the rise. According to the National Golf Foundation, an estimated 10 million people traveled to play golf in 1994, the last year for which statistics are available, up from 8 million in 1989. Cindi Crain, editor of Golf & Travel magazine ($9.97 for four issues a year; 800-678-9717), estimates that the number of golf travelers is growing at a 6% annual rate, thanks largely to baby boomers who increasingly have the money and the inclination to broaden their golf experiences.

Enter the AGT, founded last year by Hopewell, N.J. entrepreneur and avid amateur golfer Liza Price, 47. It offers hackers like me the chance to play the same PGA-caliber courses where the pros tee off, under tournament conditions. Price's operation is unique among golf-travel outfits because it re-creates the road-show aspects of the professional tours. You needn't attend all 10 annual tournaments to play, though; each competition, which comprises three rounds of golf over three days, operates as an independent event. Any man or woman with a verifiable handicap and a willingness to pay the $995 to $2,895 tariff is eligible. I paid $1,850 for my four-night stay, which included two banquets, a well-stocked hospitality suite, breakfast each morning and full guest privileges.

AGT divides the 35 to 70 people competing at each tournament into divisions, or flights, based on their handicaps. (Handicapping is the system by which golfers of different skills can compete fairly against one another; a golfer like myself, with a 36-handicap, has 36 strokes taken off his score after completing 18 holes.) At Kingsmill, the 37 participating golfers, 11 of whom were women, fell into six flights: Men's Championship for the lowest handicaps (6 or lower), A and B flights for both men and women with higher handicaps and a Super Seniors division for golfers over the age of 70.

Although the quality of play at the tournaments can be high--the average handicap for men is 14, for women in the mid-20s--the flight structure allows any golfer who can get the ball in the air to feel comfortable. For example, my assigned partners over the three days of play were close enough to my skill level that my sometimes uneven play didn't unduly hinder them. The flight system also allows for the broadest possible distribution of feel-good moments at the end of the tournament: The top three finishers in each flight (for both actual and handicap-adjusted scores) take home trophies and merchandise provided by AGT's sponsors, which include golf-club makers Snake Eyes and Top-Flite.

Although the half-dozen or so AGT officials on hand are exceedingly helpful and friendly, once the day's golf is over, participants are pretty much on their own. Nonplaying spouses who've joined their mates can take advantage of the AGT's free staff-guided sightseeing in the surrounding area during the day. Nongolf activities at Kingsmill, which is part of a 2,800-acre development owned by beer giant Anheuser-Busch, include visits to Colonial Williamsburg and Jamestown.

I was having none of that, however. I was in Virginia with but three things on my mind: Enjoy the tournament (which I did, immensely), play better each day (which I did, barely) and, most important, avoid embarrassing myself (well, two out of three ain't bad). Here's how things turned out:

--DAY ONE Each tournament opens with a cocktail party and dinner like those the pros enjoy. At Kingsmill, the opening-night festivities allowed the two dozen or so first-time tour players to mingle with the 20 or so regulars, some of whom have played in as many as four AGT events. Because the AGT is affiliated with the National Senior Sports Association, I had been worried that, at 35, I would be the youngest person on the tour by two decades or more. However, half the participants ranged in age from 29 to 49.

In addition to drinks and food, the AGT served up golf tips. One of the resort's golf professionals reviewed each of the three courses we would be playing--the River, the Woods and the Plantation--giving us pin positions, course conditions and other insider information that professional golfers find essential.

--DAY TWO I quickly realized that last night's prep session failed to include the most important advice: to prepare ourselves for the intense pressure that tournament golf entails. After my initial drive, I reached the first green in four strokes (two more than it should have taken me), and I was left with a one-foot putt for bogey (one over par, or the recommended number of strokes to complete a hole). In a casual game among friends, this last stroke would have been a "gimme"--that is, my friends would have given me the benefit of the doubt and I would have been allowed to pick up my ball and write down a score of 5. Not so on the AGT, where even the shortest putts have to be finished out. With hands trembling, I slid the ball just past the hole, settling for a double-bogey score of 6. Although consistent with my handicap, this collapse under pressure was a sign of worse to come.

On the third hole, an undulating par five that is rated the hardest on the course, I reached the green in six shots. Lining up my putt, I asked one of my playing partners--David Boss, 44, a construction foreman for a New Jersey gas company--for his read of the green, or which direction he thought the ball would roll. Before he could answer, another member of our foursome informed us both that such advice from one golfer to another was forbidden in tournament play. Stinging from the rebuke, I misread the putt--and the three after that. My final score for the hole was an embarrassing 10, five over par. At that point, I began to question my wisdom in accepting this assignment, facing as I was the prospect of humiliating myself before a national audience of MONEY readers.

That said, playing golf is a lovely way to spend a day at the office--and I could not help but enjoy the beautiful River Course, a lush, heavily wooded venue that runs along part of the James River and features tight fairways and well-tended greens. My spirits were lifted further when we reached the seventh green and set our eyes on the "leader board," that constantly updated list of the participants' standing that's a staple of tournament golf. Although familiar with leader boards from lazy afternoons spent watching golf on television, I was not prepared to see my own name near the top: My handicap-adjusted score had landed me in third place in my flight.

Filled with adrenaline, I proceeded to the eighth hole, where I promptly dropped from third place into oblivion. My memory of the hole is fuzzy, but my notes consist of one word--"blech"--which sounds about right.

Things didn't improve much until the par-three 17th, a challenging 138-yard hole that runs along the James. We teed off in the face of 30-mile-per-hour gusts that threatened to carry our balls into the choppy river on the right or the leafy oak trees on the left. Hoping to keep the ball low and out of the wind, I took a mighty swing with a 3-iron and watched in amazement as the little white sphere landed safely on the green, 20 feet from the flag. Two putts later, I finished with a par, a score that a professional would have been happy with on such a day.

The golf gods, however, left me little time to bask in glory. The par-four 18th, the finishing hole, required a first shot over 160 yards of water. If you did not make it over, you had to shoot again and take a two-stroke penalty--a feat that I managed to accomplish no less than three times. By the time I tapped in my final putt, I had tallied an astounding 15 on the hole, a score so high and so bad that there isn't even a name for it (although my playing partners helpfully suggested that in the future an 11-over-par, quintuple-double-bogey-plus-one such as I had just scored would forever be known as a Belsky).

With the first round of competition mercifully over, I arrived at the clubhouse about the same time I reached two related conclusions: I was not going to win the tournament, and I desperately needed a golf lesson.

--DAY THREE One of the nicest aspects of the AGT was the diversity of the participants. Our ranks included Ellis Greene, 48, a retired U.S. Army master sergeant from Newport News, Va., who boasts a handicap of 2; Hank Calloway, 49, an 18-handicap school-district facilities manager from Deptford, N.J.; and Bev Rust, an 81-year-old retired bank executive from San Antonio with two artificial hips and a handicap of 24.

Bev and I were grouped together on the second day of the tournament. He began the round by noting that his eyesight was poor and that he might need help locating his ball as the game proceeded. He must have been joking, since his balls were always in the same place after each shot: right in the middle of the fairway, where they were supposed to be. In fact, Bev was beating all of us after four holes when I had a humbling revelation. For senior citizens, it's an achievement to "shoot your age"--in Bev's case, an 81 or lower. I realized after the fourth hole that it would be an achievement for me if I could shoot Bev's age and my age together, or 116.

As it happened, I managed to do that, and a little bit better. I finished the round with a 112--40 over par but nonetheless a big improvement over the previous day's 127. Still, I boarded one of the free shuttle buses that Kingsmill provides its guests and headed straight for the clubhouse. There I met Kingsmill's top instructor, Tim Poland, for a golf lesson ($60 an hour). That's one of the advantages of the AGT venues: Such five-star facilities offer the gamut of golf-related activities, from videotaped lessons to driving ranges to, in the case of Kingsmill, a lovely nine-hole par-three practice course that's free to any guest of the resort.

After observing my swing for 10 minutes or so, Poland began to offer some suggestions. Chiefly, he said I was hitting too far behind the ball and, as a result, I was catching too much turf with my club. His suggestion: Hit down on the top of the ball, rather than behind it, and turn my wrists over when bringing the club around to finish my swing.

Although both corrections seemed unnatural, within minutes I was hitting the ball farther and straighter than I had in my life. By the end of the lesson I was so grateful that I told Poland I intended to name my first child after him. He seemed to think I was joking.

--DAY FOUR I was bursting with enthusiasm on the morning after my lesson. By following Poland's advice, I raced through the front nine in 51 strokes, the best I had ever scored on a course as difficult as the one we were playing. Turning to the back nine, I entertained the idea of breaking 100, a feat I had never accomplished.

Alas, it's a feat I still haven't accomplished, as I took 33 shots to get through holes 10, 11, 12 and 13. Still, I calmed myself and finished the last five holes in a respectable 27 shots, to complete the round with a 111. Although I had beaten the preceding day's tally by only one stroke, I had achieved my most important goal: I improved my score each day.

With good cheer, then, I meandered over to the driving range, where all of the AGT players were gathering for a golf clinic given by Jay Sigel, 53, an insurance executive who's now one of the hottest players on the Senior PGA Tour. Sigel's hour-long demonstration featured helpful tips about grips, swing tempo and alignment. Unfortunately, it was too late for me to make those adjustments in competition.

Although tournament play injected the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat into my game, the best part of the event was experiencing first-class courses--a far cry from the public links I usually play--and getting to know a disparate group of people who share my passion for golf. At the awards dinner a few hours later, I was surprised to find myself a little wistful that the tournament was ending. It was sort of like leaving camp at the end of the summer.

I was even more surprised when the trophies were given out. Apparently, my last-day charge had lifted me from dead last into third place in the men's B flight, which entitled me to a small crystal bowl and an invitation to the tournament of champions at Pebble Beach in December. I'd still have to pay to play, but as a third-place winner I'd receive $50 off the price of the package; first-place finishers receive $450 discounts to future events. The way I figure it, with a few more lessons and some practice...