The Hottest Round of Golf You'll Ever Play

Careful how fast you grab that metal club; you're in Death Valley in the summertime.

APPROACH THE BAG WITH CARE: It is a wise and important thing for cookware and microwaveable foods to come with warning labels -- "careful when hot" -- but a golf bag typically needs no such thing. A golfer is welcome to blithely grab whatever club she wants and not worry as to whether she's wearing her glove or not. But at the Heatstroke Open, the annual Death Valley-based summertime golf tournament? Yeah, golfers'll want to approach those shiny metal clubs with caution. We're not saying your 9-iron'll feel like the sun in your hands, but given the fact that temperatures can reach upwards of 120 Fahrenheit during the tourney, well. You decide how much your bare palm can take. It's set to swing again at the golf course at Furnace Creek, and over a memorable weekend, too: the start of summer.

SO THOSE DATES ARE... Friday, June 21 through Sunday, June 23. It's year three for what has to be one of the warmest sporting events on the planet, and we'll go to that hyperbole, given the fact that Death Valley is one of the lowest, driest, and hottest places on earth. Oh, and about the "lowest" part? The Furnace Creek Golf Course is some 214 feet below sea level, making it the lowest golf course anywhere. That's measurable, not approximate, so you can brag away to all of your golfing buddies, perhaps saying you don't need elevation to achieve a super high swing.

ALSO THIS SUMMER: The Badwater Ultramarathon returns to Death Valley, so the Heatstroke Open has some competition in the "hottest sporting event" category. Feel up to hoofing it through the desert for 135 miles over three days in July? Then this could be your ultimate run.

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