The Ultimate Sports Vacation at World-Class Resorts

Skiing & Snowboarding

Jackson Hole Mountain Resort
With the nation’s highest vertical drop and infamous double-black diamond trail, Corbet’s Couloir, Jackson Hole has always had the reputation of being an experts-only mountain. But Jackson Hole Mountain Resort’s multiday camps offer an opportunity for intermediate and advanced skiers and snowboarders who fearlessly want to take on the next challenge in a personalized environment. The Elevate Women’s Ski Camp, in particular, features an immersive program with a unique sense of community, support, and encouragement for those ready to push the boundaries and learn something new.

Day one is about goal setting and a focus on technical skills, working on form and control, and most importantly, breaking bad habits from years of misguided instruction. A ski off on the first day pairs up groups of four per coach, matching ability and skill levels with goals and desires. For example, grouping those who love skiing moguls and want to be able to hit them on black diamond trails, as opposed to those who want to learn how to actually ski moguls. By day two, participants are already applying tactics. Day three raises the bar even higher exploring new terrain, such as a session in the backcountry for those groups that prove capable of handling the deep powder and challenges of out-of-bounds skiing. It begins with a briefing on avalanche rescue and terrain management. Day four puts the finishing touches on the objectives set out at the beginning.

The program requires endurance and stamina and involves a dedication to long, hard days with early rises. Apres ski events round out each day with an energized camp banquet on the final night. Women of various ages from their 20s to 40s to 60s gather to celebrate their accomplishments and the strong spirit of camaraderie established during their struggles and successes.

Most participants stay at Teton Mountain Lodge (tetonlodge.com), but for much-needed pampering after a hard day on the mountain, check into a plush suite at Four Seasons Resort (fourseasons.com), whose slope-side ski concierge is just steps away from the base-camp gondolas of Rendezvous Mountain. Book time at the spa for the 90-minute Golden Body Quench that treats inflammation and kneads sore muscles, plus incorporates a firming collagen facial mask. And if you can stand it, a session in the steam room then hot whirlpool followed by cold plunges is perfect for muscle recovery. jacksonhole.com

Beginner: Sun Valley, Idaho, and Stowe, Vermont

Sun Valley has a small mountain, Dollar, entirely for first-time learning, with the newest-generation, terrain-based teaching techniques and no high-speed experts ripping through the lessons. When it’s time to step up, the main mountain, Baldy, is world-famous for its constant pitch, long runs with a consistent angle that are perfect for practicing carving and continuous longer radius turns. If you live in the East and don’t want to fly across the country to give skiing a try, head to Vermont’s most iconic resort, which also features two separate mountains, connected by a horizontal gondola. Smaller Spruce Peak is the one for learning, and while Stowe boasts some of the most challenging double black trails in the East, Spruce is almost exclusively green and blue. Stowe is also part of Vail Resorts, which has one of the best instruction programs in the industry. stowe.com

Tennis & Pickleball

JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa, Palm Desert, California
Home to the annual BNP Paribas Open in March and myriad luxury resorts with first-rate court facilities, the Palm Springs region has long been a global hotbed for tennis vacations, and more recently for pickleball, a sport that has exploded in popularity. But no property here takes this further than the JW Marriott, with an extensive racquet club that includes 13 courts and three surfaces (grass, clay, and hard), a combination rarely found under one roof, along with eight new pickleball courts. The tennis center is managed by acclaimed, worldwide instructional leader Peter Burwash International, and the resort hosts several scheduled adult Burwash tennis camps each year (typically April, November, and December). The five-day camps include two three-hour clinics in the mornings and again after lunch, focusing on fundamentals, point play, and tournament play, utilizing all three surfaces. When there are no camps, the resort offers 90-minute clinics five days a week, and private instruction whenever you want it. The JW Marriott is so popular with tennis players that they guarantee guest matching to your ability or will provide a free private lesson if they fail to find a suitable partner. Several of the outdoor tennis and pickleball courts are lighted for night play and offer both scheduled clinics and private instruction. The full-service shop supplies everything from new gear to restringing, and when you’re not rallying, the expansive resort features a large spa, multiple pools, and a 36-hole golf club. experiencecdt.com

Beginners: Mauna Lani, an Auberge Resort, Hawaii
With nine tennis and pickleball courts, the Mauna Lani offers the Tennis 101 clinic for first-timers twice a week and hourlong fundamentals clinics for beginner and intermediate players twice daily. No experience is required for the 90-minute pickleball round robins with instruction that are offered four days a week, and first-timer pickleball clinics are held every morning, with private instruction available on demand. The resort has private beachfront residences and estates in addition to luxury rooms and suites. aubergeresorts.com

Sailing

J/World Sailing School, Multiple Locations
More than four decades ago, J/World launched mainly for boat racing, and while it has expanded into just about every facet of sailing, offering everything from intro schools to certification programs for bareboat charters, they have stayed true to their high-performance roots, offering learning options for even highly experienced sailors. If you sail but haven’t raced, the five-day Intro to Racing is great for both giving racing a try and sharpening handling and nautical skills. The next level up is Advanced Yacht Racing, also five days and taught on J/80 sailboats with a maximum of 4:1 instructor-to-student ratios. At the highest level, they offer hands-on participation in some major races on a 50-foot boat, limited to six students with three instructors for a 2:1 ratio during the actual offshore competition. Opportunities include the Los Angeles-to-Hawaii “Transpac”; Newport Beach, California, to Cabo, Mexico; San Diego to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico; and others. They are so popular for racing that the five-day classes are offered just about every week, as opposed to many sports boot camps held once or a few times each year.

In addition, they offer a slate of weekend schools for experienced sailors including Advanced Boat Handling, Performance Cruising, and Liveaboard Cruising. Unlike the best golf and ski schools, the best sailing academies do not tend to be resort-based and operate at multiple locations. J/World teaches from a trio of campuses in San Francisco, San Diego, and Puerto Vallarta. sailing-jworld.com

Beginner: Steve & Doris Colgate’s Offshore Sailing School
Founded in 1964 by Olympian, America’s Cup racer, and sailing Hall of Famer Steve Colgate, Offshore Sailing claims to be America’s oldest such program, and it’s hard to argue with its success. More than 160,000 people have learned with them at several locations in Florida and the British Virgin Islands. The jumping-off point is Offshore Sailing School 101, a three-day course after which you should be comfortable sailing on your own in boats as big as 30 feet. But if you really want to dive in, their Fast Track to Cruising course combines the first two days of this with the next two certification levels (Basic Cruising 103 and Bareboat Cruising 104) in an eight-day immersion—after which you’ll be ready to charter yachts up to 50 feet on worldwide sailing vacations. offshoresailing.com

Golf

The Kingdom at Reynolds Lake Oconee, Georgia
Some schools excel with expert teaching, others with instructional technology, and some just have a perfect setting for learning. No place combines all these quite like the golf and lake community of Reynolds Lake Oconee. There is also a Ritz-Carlton hotel, rental homes and cottages, and six high-end resort courses by Jack Nicklaus, Rees Jones, and Tom Fazio.

But the heart and soul is a dedicated teaching center attached to one of the best custom club fitting facilities, used by PGA and LPGA tour pros. The academy has indoor and outdoor hitting bays with Trackman launch monitors and all the best video and computer swing analysis equipment, plus multiple putting and chipping greens. The lead instructor is longtime PGA Tour player Blake Adams, who has a unique gift for seeing and speaking golf at the level of a layperson, even though he teaches up-and-coming professionals. The old school of golf instruction tried to get everyone to swing the same way and often failed, while Adams takes a modern, highly individualized biomechanical approach based on your natural movements and range of motion. He also has a system for quickly improving putting and chipping—where amateurs lose many strokes.

The schools here are exceptional, and the most popular is the two-day Energize, offering two half-days of instruction (then you can play 18 holes) and a maximum 3:1 student-to-teacher ratio. This can be upgraded to the Energize Tour Experience, adding an invaluable nine-hole on-course playing lesson with Adams, something you are not going to experience elsewhere. If you are a low handicapper looking for a smaller edge, the two-day Scoring School is the elite option. After dialing in your swing, you can take advantage of the Kingdom, TaylorMade’s flagship high-tech club fitting facility, for clubs to maximize your game. reynoldslakeoconee.com

Beginners: The Nemacolin Golf Academy, Farmington, Pennsylvania
The state-of-the-art golf academy was completely renovated as part of a recent, half-billion-dollar upgrade to this massive luxury resort. In addition to the teaching bays, there’s a rare, entirely outdoor, Trackman-equipped driving range, and if there’s a useful tool for teaching golf, they’ve probably bought it. The unique New Golfer Bootcamps are three-hour programs for first-timers and can be followed with Intermediate Bootcamps, or a three-day intensive golf school, limited to three students at a time. nemacolin.com

Surfing

Tropicsurf, COMO Maalifushi Resort, Maldives
Australia-based global instruction specialist Tropicsurf has long been the leader in high-end private surf instruction, with expert teachers contracted to run the schools at many Four Seasons, One & Only, COMO, Anantara, and Six Senses resorts. But in 2024 they launched a new concept called Progression Vacations, an intensive improvement week using a 10-level pedagogy developed by company founder Ross Phillips, also creator of the Surfbetter 100 digital program. Phillips took the progression model based upon principles from modern ski instruction and applied his teaching methodology garnered from 30 years of experience to create a structured progression program for surfing.

The new weeklong surfing boot camps are fittingly called Surf Progression Vacations and include daily use of video analysis. They are headed by instructor Ryley Haskell and a team of senior coaches, adding bodywork and yoga classes along with top-shelf equipment that makes advancement easier. The new camps launch with a September edition at COMO Maalifushi, which offers a unique setup near more than 20 lesser-visited surf breaks strung across three outer atolls, accessed by high-speed boats. Surf Progression Vacations will then be rolled out at a selection of various resorts that Tropicsurf serves across Mexico, Nicaragua, Bali, Fiji, Australia, the Seychelles, St. Barth, and Costa Rica, as well as on-demand private trips and yacht-based charters. Otherwise, the company continues to offer quality private instruction for all levels including advanced surfers at each of the resorts it services. tropicsurf.com

Beginners: Jamie O’Brien Surf Experience, Hotel del Coronado, San Diego
Many first-timers opt for a single-day lesson at novice hot spots such as Waikiki Beach and La Jolla, California. For a full-blown, learn-to-surf vacation, it’s hard to beat the iconic “Del,” one of the only resorts in the country with an in-house surfing school. The beach offers consistent, gentle waves perfect for learning, and from mid-April until the end of the year, daily lessons are regularly available with skilled instructors handpicked and trained by Jamie O’Brien, a legendary pro big-wave surfer. Small group (4:1), private group, and one-on-one lessons are offered from 90 minutes, with top-quality boards in a wide range of sizes. hoteldel.com

Photo credits: Courtesy Jackson Hole Mountain Resort; Stowe Mountain Resort/Jesse Schloff; JW Marriott Desert Springs Resort & Spa; Mauna Lani, Auberge Resorts Collection; Steve & Doris Colgate’s Offshore Sailing School; Kingdom Golf School/Kelly Kline; Nemacolin Golf Academy; Tropicsurf