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The post America’s first indoor 18-hole ‘golf course’ is in the works appeared first on Golf.

The beauty of the game is that it takes us out of our workaday routines, away from screens, into the fresh air, kissed by the wind, warmed by the sun, feeling the earth beneath our feet.

Or not.

It’s a brave new world, and our favorite pastime has evolved with it. Indoor golf is no longer the oxymoron it used to be. Simulators, of course, have been around for years. And for the past two seasons, Tour pros have even been competing on the simulated layouts of TGL.

An indoor course that anyone can play.

That’s the pitch from CityGolf USA, which recently announced what it describes as “America’s first full 18-hole indoor golf course,” set to open in Nashville this winter.

Keep reading, though, and you realize that “indoor course” is being loosely defined. CityGolf USA is not to be confused with Megalodome, a concept that calls for an executive course of par-3s and par-4s, housed within a sprawling complex of interconnected domes, just outside Chicago (though whether it’ll ever get built is another matter).

CityGolf USA promises something different — a hybrid of virtual and traditional golf, with 18 sequential holes played on Golfzon simulators inside a 175,000-square-foot warehouse. Smack your shot into the screen, and once your digital ball has landed, the screen lifts to reveal a putting surface on which you finish out the hole. Shades of TGL, for sure.

Along with this contemporary form of the game, the venue will include the kind of extras first popularized in the alt-golf industry by Topgolf, including a restaurant, a bar, a pro shop, private event spaces and certified PGA teaching pros.

However you feel about simulator golf and these venues — personally, they’re not my jam — it’s hard to deny that the game remains ripe for disruption, especially in urban areas, where time is short and land is scarce. That’s the target market for CityGolf USA, which says that Nashville is the first of multiple planned locations around the country, all aiming to reframe what a round of golf can be.

3 Things I’m Thinking

Tobacco Road sprouts a short course: Mike Strantz reframed our understanding of what a course could be, incorporating classic design elements into wonderfully whimsical creations, nowhere more famously than at Tobacco Road in North Carolina. And though Strantz himself is no longer with us (he died of cancer in 2005), Tobacco Road now has a short course that taps the architect’s iconoclastic spirit. The Matchbox, a 12-hole par-3 layout with synthetic turf (and a mix of real-sand and faux bunkers) blended into the natural landscape. It opened Aug. 1. You can get a closer look at it in the video below.

The latest whispers from Whispering Pines: In the same North Carolina Sandhills region, Kyle Franz’s redo of the Pines Course, one of two 18-holers at the Country Club of Whispering Pines, should be ready for play in September. Its reopening will expand the portfolio of Ross Resorts, the same ownership group for which Franz restored three other prominent area courses, Mid Pines, Pine Needles and Southern Pines.

A taste of Candyroot: One more from the Carolinas: Candyroot Lodge, a resort-in-the-making near Jefferson, S.C., about 80 miles southeast of Charlotte, will welcome preview play on its first course starting on Oct. 28. Designed by Broomsedge architect Mike Koprowski, the course stands to be a game-changer for a golf-mad Charlotte region that is relatively light on public-access destination golf. In lieu of traditional tee times, Candyroot will be selling day passes: all-you-can-eat golf, food, drinks and a bag of swag for $175. Those passes will go on sale on the Candyroot website on Sept. 8.

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The post Is Merion the greatest course in the world? An architect makes the case appeared first on Golf.

The post Is Merion the greatest course in the world? An architect makes the case appeared first on Golf.

“I love Merion and I don’t even know her last name,” Lee Trevino once quipped. Classic Trevino, of course — but he meant it.

And no wonder. Merion was where he won his second U.S. Open, in a playoff over Jack Nicklaus, no less.

He’s hardly the only one who’s fallen for the place.

Merion has that effect on people. Hugh Wilson’s design in the leafy suburbs of Philadelphia — this week’s host of the U.S. Amateur Championship — has long been an architectural darling and a fixture on Top 100 lists (it sits at No. 13 on GOLF’s current global ranking).

Count Jim Wagner among the legion of Merion admirers. A Philly native, he grew up playing the course, thanks to friends in the caddie lot. Even in his youth, he sensed that the craftsmanship behind it was special, an appreciation that has only swelled with his understanding of golf design.

Now an architect himself, Wagner collaborated with Gil Hanse on a 2019 restoration of Merion, a job that made him feel like an artisan entrusted with touching up the Sistine Chapel.

Wagner would argue that Merion is the finest golf course in the world.

Why?

The answer lives in an episode of the Destination Golf podcast, recorded last year, in which Wagner made his case.

Start with the property itself: an intimate site, ripe with possibilities and pitfalls, spliced by a creek and pocked by a quarry. Wilson wanted to incorporate those defining features, a challenging task on the scant acreage that was further complicated by a road that split the grounds in two.

In Wagner’s view, Wilson’s solution was at once ingenious and unconventional.

“I’m not sure there’s another routing that you could have put on this golf course,” he said.

But it would have raised eyebrows — and hackles — today.

Consider the opening sequence alone. After putting out on the par-4 1st, you cross the road to take on the first of Merion’s two par 5s. Yep. Just two, and you play them both in the first four holes. Propose that to a course developer today and they’d laugh you out of the room, Wagner says.

Cobbs Creek and its tributaries threaten shots on the 4th, 5th and 9th holes, and then again on the 11th and 12th, after which you cross the road to play a short par-3 set cozily close to the clubhouse. There’s only so much room and only so many options, which helps explain the next quirk in the routing. On your walk to the 13th tee, you cross the entrance road, the putting green and the 1st tee — another flourish that Wagner says wouldn’t fly today.

“If you asked somebody to walk across or in front of another golf hole, they’d look at you like you were crazy,” he says.

Did we mention that the driving range is also nowhere near the 1st tee?

Working on a tight site, Wilson also squeezed in an exhilarating variety of demands. The routing moves through all points on the compass, while the holes themselves present compelling contrasts. Where the par-3 13th is pint-sized, little more than a baby wedge, the par-3 3rd can stretch into a monster; in the 2013 U.S. Open, it tipped out at 266 yards. Then there’s the gulf on the par-4s: some 200 yards between the shortest and the longest.

“It’s just an incredible test of golf,” Wagner says. “There’s so much to it from an architectural standpoint.”

Merion has been described as an act in three parts: drama in its opening, giving way to comedy and then to tragedy, with the 16th and 17th traversing the quarry and the tough-as-nails 18th taking you home.

No matter how you phrase it, Wagner says, it’s a work of art.

You can listen to the entire interview with Wagner here.

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The post Wicker baskets, horse boots and Bobby Jones mementos: Inside Merion’s historic clubhouse appeared first on Golf.

The post Wicker baskets, horse boots and Bobby Jones mementos: Inside Merion’s historic clubhouse appeared first on Golf.

The most terrifying sound in golf is silence—the quiet that falls when you stand over your ball with all eyes on you.

The absence of noise can unsettle even seasoned players. And nowhere does it ring out louder than on the 1st tee of the East Course at Merion Golf Club.

On the scorecard, the par-4 opener is a friendly handshake. At 358 yards, it can be tackled with a long iron and a wedge.

But consider the location of the tee box, directly alongside the clubhouse terrace, where glasses clink and silverware clatters amid the buzz of conversation. That is, until someone steps up to hit.

“You know that everybody on the terrace is looking at you,” John Capers III said.

That’s daunting enough when your back is to the crowd. But, Capers added, “God forbid if you’re a left-hander, because you’re looking back at them.”

As a longtime Merion member, Capers is intimately familiar with the unique atmosphere on Merion’s 1st tee. As chairman of the club’s archives committee, he’s equally well acquainted with the history that fills the clubhouse — knowledge that he leaned on while helping lead GOLF.com on a clubhouse tour ahead of the U.S. Amateur, which returns to Merion Aug. 10-16.

Like much of Merion itself, the clubhouse has evolved over time. Rather than a single structure, it’s actually four buildings stitched together over time. The oldest is an 1824 farmhouse, later connected to a barn by way of a structure that now serves as the club’s men’s locker room. More recently, a hospitality tent from the 2013 U.S. Open was transformed into a pavilion, giving new life to a temporary fixture that now flows seamlessly into the rest of the facility.

History is everywhere you turn. Established 35 years ago, the Merion archives are a vast storehouse of memorabilia. Books. Scorecards. Ceramics. Puzzles. Belts. If it has ever been emblazoned with Merion’s iconic wicker basket logo, there’s a good chance you’ll find it somewhere in the clubhouse, nearly all of it donated by club members. And don’t forget the horseshoes. Or, rather, boots. How they came about is a story in itself.

Some of the club’s most meaningful artifacts, meanwhile, are displayed in plain sight. The new Jones Room honors Bobby Jones, who made his U.S. Amateur debut at Merion as a 14-year-old in 1916 before returning in 1930 to complete the Grand Slam with his victory in the U.S. Amateur.

True to its name, the renovated Wicker bar pays homage to the club’s most recognizable symbol. The beer taps have wicker handles, while three oversized wicker baskets—once tucked away in the archives—now hang above a framed copy of the 1916 patent application that William Flynn filed for Merion’s famous wicker basket design.

You get the picture. The East Course may be Merion’s main attraction. But the clubhouse is a destination in its own right. Quiet, please. Our video tour of the historic facility is playing above.

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The post Royal Birkdale membership fees: How much it costs to join the Open Championship host club appeared first on Golf.

The post Royal Birkdale membership fees: How much it costs to join the Open Championship host club appeared first on Golf.

Jordan Spieth is a member of Royal Birkdale.

But he had to win the 2017 Open Championship to earn that honor.

Which begs the question, now that the Open is back at Royal Birkdale: for those of us who’ll never hoist the Claret Jug, what does it take to join the club?

Given its tournament pedigree and regal designation, you might expect Royal Birkdale to charge a king’s ransom. But this is England, not the United States, where initiation fees at marquee clubs routinely climb into six figures. Like many top clubs across the UK and Ireland, Royal Birkdale keeps membership relatively affordable while drawing significant revenue from outside play. Green fees range from £450 to £495 (roughly $610 to $670), depending on the season, and golfers are clearly willing to pay them. According to the club’s website, visitor times at Royal Birkdale are effectively sold out.

Compare that to the cost of joining. Several sources with close ties to Royal Birkdale told GOLF.com that the club’s initiation fee is £6,600 (about $9,000). After that, annual dues are £2,200, or around $3,000.

By championship-golf standards, that’s a bargain.

There’s a catch, of course. Membership is full, and openings don’t crop up very often. There’s no waiting list, either. Instead, prospective members need an existing member to propose them and another to second the nomination, along with as many additional supporters as they can muster.

Then comes the vetting process. Prospective members play multiple rounds with current members, who aren’t simply evaluating their golf. They also want to know whether you’d make for a good clubmate. Are you pleasant company? Can you get around the course at a reasonable pace? In short, are you someone they’d actually enjoy spending 18 holes with, plus time at the bar?

Winning the Claret Jug remains the fastest route to membership. For everyone else, patience—and the right playing partners—will have to do.

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The post This unheralded course 2 hours from Royal Birkdale deserves way more shine appeared first on Golf.

The post This unheralded course 2 hours from Royal Birkdale deserves way more shine appeared first on Golf.

For most of my adult life, I have been searching for golf’s hidden gems.

When I joined GOLF’s ranking panel decades ago, that search was productive. Some of the greatest courses in the world were hiding in plain sight. National Golf Links of America did not get the attention it deserved. North Berwick wasn’t even in the Top 100. Chicago Golf Club was admired by architectural devotees but hardly qualified as a household name.

That world has largely disappeared.

Over the last 30 years, golfers have become dramatically more sophisticated consumers of architecture. Rankings, books, websites, podcasts, social media and the ease of international travel have exposed golfers to great design in ways that would have been unimaginable when I first joined the panel. Information now moves instantly. A spectacular course no longer stays secret for very long.

Or so I thought.

In May, while working toward completing GOLF’s Top 100 Courses in the World, I set off on two journeys. One took me across England, where my son and I drove nearly 1,000 miles in a week, playing nine rounds over six days. The other carried me to some of the most remote destinations in European golf, including Norway’s Lofoten Links and Ardfin on Scotland’s Isle of Jura.

I expected to be impressed.

I did not expect to be surprised.

The course that lingered in my mind long after the trips ended was not perched above the Arctic Sea. It was not accessible only by ferry. It did not have crashing waves, cinematic vistas or Instagram-famous photographs.

Instead, it was an inland course in Nottinghamshire that receives only a handful of North American visitors each year.

Its name is Hollinwell, or Notts.

During our travels around England, I heard many knowledgeable golfers speak of Hollinwell with great respect but also with a caveat.

“It’s a little out of the way.”

The course is 130 miles northwest of London (and roughly 145 miles southeast of this week’s Open Championship site, Royal Birkdale), in a rural county that gave rise to the legend of Robin Hood. The ride in our rental car took two hours, mostly on the motorway. By the time we reached the club, the temperature had dropped precipitously. But my excitement swelled as we turned onto the entrance road, which bisects the course, providing a glimpse of what’s to come, with three holes to the right and the remainder on the left. The three holes on the right were added by Tom Williamson to a Willie Park Jr. routing that first opened in 1901. Williamson was the head pro at Notts for 54 years and a competitor in the Open Championship for nearly as long, from 1897 and 1947.

We had set a time for 2 p.m. but arrived an hour early and noticed that the course looked mostly deserted. Inside the small pro shop, we asked if it would be a problem to head out now, and were told that if we were quick, we could get out ahead of an inter-club tournament. So, off we went. Hollinwell, like almost all clubs in the British Isles uses a tee-time booking service that is accessible on its website. Back in the day, I remember writing handwritten letters to secretaries of the best clubs. Those days are gone.

As we stood on the 2nd tee, I understood why Williamson thought the course should open on that side of the road.  The hole provides the first — and perhaps most dramatic encounter — with a massive dune that comes into play many times on the other side of the road. Depending on placement of the tee shot, the second can be blind, or semi-blind to a green that sits at the base of the large dune that defines one side of the property.  It’s a remarkable, natural hole, and a hallmark of a course that feels more discovered than built. 

The par-4 4th, near the clubhouse, served as the first hole of Park’s original design, and it’s a stout test, playing longer than its yardage into a prevailing wind. That’s reflective of Nottinwell itself, which was routed in such a way that it has been able to withstand the test of time and the onslaught of technology.  

The 7th is a great example of a wonderful hole on a flat part of the property with heather to carry off the tee and a series of beautiful fairway bunkers. Elsewhere, the land is more dramatic. Holes 10 through 17 take advantage of that terrain, interacting in various ways with the massive dune. The 11th, a short par-4, moves gently alongside it; the long par-3 13th, the best of a strong set of one-shotters, plays down off it; the 17th green and 18th tee nestle against it.

As we wrapped up our round, I couldn’t help comparing Hollinwell to our stops at Lofoten Links and Ardfin, two of the hardest-to-reach courses in Europe. When a course sits in a beautiful location, as Lofoten or Ardfin do, it raises a question: Should beauty count in one’s evaluation? I like to look at a golf hole and ask myself, if a hole on the edge of a cliff was instead on the edge of a forest would it still lodge itself in our memory.

I loved my time at Ardfin but I couldn’t help wondering: If it had the bounciness of a links, how much better might it have been? At Lofoten, I was awestruck by my surroundings, but the scenery was more of a spectacle than the course. At Hollinwell, the course itself was the star, and I marveled that its glitter hadn’t drawn more attention.

In an Instagram world, for better or worse, we will have fewer and fewer hidden gems going forward. We will not see a world where National, North Berwick and Chicago Golf Club are largely ignored the way they were 40 years ago.

But if you look hard enough, you can still find a place like Hollinwell. And thank goodness for that.

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The post 9 things to know about Royal Birkdale, the ‘fairest’ Open test appeared first on Golf.

The post 9 things to know about Royal Birkdale, the ‘fairest’ Open test appeared first on Golf.

Nine years ago, Jordan Spieth spent 20 minutes sorting through his options for a drop with the Claret Jug on the line. The wait seemed to last forever. The time since has flown by.

Just like that, the Open Championship is back at Royal Birkdale for the club’s 11th turn as host. Before play begins, here are some things to know about one of golf’s great championship venues.

It was born as a nine-hole course

The club first welcomed play in 1889 on what was then a nine-hole course. Eight years later, it moved to its current home in the Birkdale Hills, where 18 holes were laid out by George Lowe, the head pro at nearby Royal Lytham & St. Annes.

It’s in a golf-rich zip code

Public tee times are a no-go at Royal Birkdale this week. But there are plenty of other nearby places to play. An hour’s drive along the coast of the Irish Sea will get you to a constellation of outstanding courses, including Royal Lytham, Royal Liverpool, Wallasey, Formby, West Lancashire, Hillside and Southport & Ainsdale.

It’s a relative newcomer to the rota

Of all the clubs on the current Open rota, Royal Birkdale is the newest addition. Though it was founded in 1889, it didn’t host its first Open until 1954, when Peter Thomson claimed the Claret Jug.

Its “Royal” designation marked a rising reputation

Not every great links gets the royal treatment. Royal Birkdale earned its designation in 1951, when King George VI granted the club permission to add the coveted prefix to its name. The timing wasn’t incidental. In 1946 and 1948, Birkdale had shined while staging the British Amateur Championship and the Curtis Cup, respectively. Then, in 1951, six months before the monarch gave his official sign-off, the club had proved its mettle — and an even bigger tournament was still to come.

It was stadium golf before that became a thing

Long before the rise of man-made stadium courses, Royal Birkdale offered a natural example — the layout, which ranks 42nd on GOLF’s list of the Top 100 Courses in the World, runs through a landscape of towering dunes. Despite those dramatic features, the design itself is relatively understated, with mostly mellow contours and few blind shots. It is often referred to as the “fairest” Open test, though don’t try telling that to anyone who spends time in the riveted fairway bunkers, which are steep, devilishly placed and central to the course’s defense.

Its clubhouse breaks the links mold

Unlike the stately Victorian and Tudor clubhouses found at several Open venues, Royal Birkdale’s headquarters looks almost futuristic. The striking Art Deco building opened in 1935 after architects Fred Hawtree and J.H. Taylor rerouted the course, moving the opening hole and rendering the old pavilion obsolete.

Architect George Tonge won a design competition with a building inspired by an ocean liner. As he later explained, “I imagined the lines of a liner at sea; the perfect balance of the ship at whatever angle and from whatever side it was seen.”

Nearly a century later, it remains one of the most recognizable clubhouses in championship golf.

A career bookended by Birkdale

Thomson’s victory in 1954 was the first of three straight Open titles in a career that would ultimately include five. Royal Birkdale served as the bookends to that remarkable run, as it also hosted the ’65 Open, the last time Thomson hoisted the Claret Jug.

It has produced marquee winners — and unforgettable moments

Royal Birkdale’s roster of champions reads like a Hall of Fame ballot. Peter Thomson, Arnold Palmer, Lee Trevino, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, Padraig Harrington and Jordan Spieth have all lifted the Claret Jug here.

The near-misses have been almost as memorable.

In 1976, a 19-year-old Seve Ballesteros burst onto the international stage with a precocious performance punctuated by a deft chip from the fescue that bounded between bunkers to within tap-in range on the 18th hole, securing a tie for second with Jack Nicklaus.

Twenty-two years later came another breakout showing. This time it was 17-year-old amateur Justin Rose, who holed out from the rough on the final hole to finish fourth, a shot that gave rise to one of the Open’s more meme-worthy celebrations.

Then came Spieth in 2017.

The championship is remembered for a 20-minute rules discussion after his wayward drive on the 13th. But what followed was even more remarkable. Spieth salvaged bogey, then played his final five holes in five-under par, highlighted by an eagle at the par-5 15th and a hole-out from a greenside bunker at the 17th, turning one of the Open’s strangest detours into one of its finest finishes.

It’s not the same Birkdale Spieth conquered

Championship courses often get the architectural equivalent of nips and tucks between major events. Royal Birkdale has had something closer to a facelift.

Since Spieth’s victory in 2017, the club has made several substantial changes. The old 14th hole is gone, while the new 15th is an absolute brute — a par-3 that can stretch to 240 yards. After a scouting visit, Spieth described the new hole as compelling but suggested it could get “funky” with the tees in the wrong place, perhaps playing better when moved forward into more of a 6- or 7-iron range.

The 5th hole has also been transformed from a partially blind tee shot into a drivable par-4 after the removal of a large dune, giving players a clear look at the green. Beware the pond lurking to the right.

As for the new 15th, the first bunker by the green can mess with your mind. Sir Nick Faldo has described it as an “optical delusion” because, from the tee, it appears to sit directly in front of the putting surface when it’s actually offset to the left.

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The post ‘I was blown away’: Mid Ocean restoration aided by surprising discovery appeared first on Golf.

The post ‘I was blown away’: Mid Ocean restoration aided by surprising discovery appeared first on Golf.

In the grainy footage, shot a century ago, a nattily dressed man swings a hickory-shafted club with an easy, practiced motion.

The smooth mechanics aren’t surprising. Charles Blair Macdonald knew how to play the game.

The recently uncovered footage, discovered in the archives of the Smithsonian Institution by Mid Ocean Club member Rick Skelly, is believed to contain the only known moving images of the father of American golf architecture — playing the only course he designed outside the United States, no less.

“I was reviewing a longer film with classic 1920s Bermuda images when it suddenly switched to Mid Ocean and the 1st tee,” Skelly said in a press release. “I see this older gentleman take the club back, and immediately I think, ‘That’s C.B. Macdonald right there.’ I was blown away.”

The film is more than a historical curiosity. It also has become a research tool.

On Thursday, Mid Ocean announced that the design duo of Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner have been commissioned to restore the famed layout, which Macdonald completed in the early 1920s. As part of its work, Hanse’s team has studied the newly unearthed footage, along with other archival material, to help guide a restoration aimed at recapturing Macdonald’s original vision.

That vision includes the club’s celebrated par-4 5th, a dramatic Cape hole that doglegs around Mangrove Lake and which Hanse has called “one of the greatest holes in the world of golf.”

Hanse is no stranger to Macdonald’s work. His firm has restored several of the architect’s most celebrated designs, including Sleepy Hollow, The Creek and Yale, while also compiling an extensive portfolio of high-profile restoration projects at clubs such as Los Angeles Country Club, Seminole and Pinehurst No. 4.

“Ultimately our goal is to be faithful to Macdonald and restore his work,” Hanse said in a statement. “With the archival information and, ultimately, having a presence on site and being on the machinery myself, we will have an opportunity to get in the ground and faithfully restore what Macdonald and Raynor built on the property.”

Ranked among GOLF’s Top 100 Courses You Can Play, Mid Ocean is renowned for the variety of its challenge and the beauty of its views, moving from rugged oceanside cliffs to inland terrain before returning to the coastline, with template holes including the famed Cape 5th and Redan-inspired 17th. Macdonald himself was especially fond of the property, writing in his 1928 autobiography that there were “no more beautiful golfing vistas in the world” than those at National Golf Links of America, his most famous design — “unless it be those from The Mid Ocean Club in Bermuda.”

Those weren’t empty words. Though Macdonald summered at National (he was of a social class that used seasons as verbs), he wintered in a home overlooking the 5th hole at Mid Ocean every year until his death in 1939.

Hanse, too, has a personal connection to Mid Ocean. He first saw the course while on his honeymoon with his wife, Tracey, four decades ago.

Though Mid Ocean is a members club, it sets aside a tranche of tee times for the public. The restoration is scheduled to begin after a separate clubhouse renovation is completed, with the course expected to close for construction in the fall of 2027.

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The post On Georgia’s Golden Isles, a wealth of world-class golf | Destination Golf appeared first on Golf.

The post On Georgia’s Golden Isles, a wealth of world-class golf | Destination Golf appeared first on Golf.

The dynastic families of the Gilded Age had money to vacation wherever they wanted.

Often, where they went was the Georgia coast.

Then, as now, the barriers islands there were known as the Golden Isles, a moniker coined by early Spanish explorers in search of riches, though the name also fit the landscape itself, where the marshes glow gold beneath the coastal sun.

In time, the islands attracted a different kind of wealth. The Vanderbilts. The Rockefellers. The Carnegies. The Morgans. They came to escape winter, dodge the spotlight, fish, sail, bicycle and, naturally, play golf.

More than a century later, the Golden Isles remain one of America’s great golf destinations, with a concentration of standout courses that ranges from Golden Age classics to modern championship tests. The lineup includes acclaimed layouts at Sea Island and St. Simons Island, along with the newly restored Great Dunes on Jekyll Island, a heralded Walter Travis design.

To experience the area firsthand, GOLF.com recently spent a long weekend roaming the islands with the crew from St. Andre Golf — a dynastic clan of the Instagram-era whose comedy sketches have earned them a massive following. Outfitted by Johnnie-O, which supported the trip, we did our best to look the part.

The itinerary carried us from Sea Island Resort and a round on the Plantation Course (it dates to the 1920s but has since been renovated by local boys Davis Love III and his brother, Mark Love), then on to Jekyll Island for a loop at the reborn Great Dunes.

Golf, though, was only part of the story. We also engaged in Gilded Age cosplay, cruising the Intracoastal in search of dolphins, indulging in fresh seafood and, because no visit is complete without it, stopping at Southern Soul, the famed barbecue joint that’s as much a local institution as any golf course.

The Golden Isles still attract their share of wealth, including a leaderboard’s worth of PGA Tour pros. But for all the luxury, the place has retained its laid-back, salt-air spirit.

Watch the video above for a taste of an excursion to one of America’s richest golf destinations — in every sense of the word.

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The post Sam Snead’s favorite getaway has new look. But same old buddies’-trip appeal appeared first on Golf.

The post Sam Snead’s favorite getaway has new look. But same old buddies’-trip appeal appeared first on Golf.

Sam Snead was fond of golf but fonder still of fishing.

He played the former, he once said, so that he could earn enough to enjoy the latter. Lucky him. In the rural Virginia region where he was born and raised, both pursuits were within easy reach.

Worldwide renown awaited Snead, of course. But he retained his ties to the place where he got started: the Omni Homestead Resort & Spa, an historic retreat tucked into the folds of the Allegheny Mountains. In his early 20s, he was hired as the head professional at the Cascades Course, one of the property’s two venerable layouts. It remained his home club throughout his life. In 1983, at age 71, he shot a course-record 60 that still stands.

If Snead were around today, he’d find the spirit of the resort familiar. The mountains haven’t moved. The trout still hold in the same cold streams. And the golf footprint is largely unchanged. But he would also notice an awful lot that’s new. Three years ago, the resort completed a $150 million-plus renovation, a top-to-bottom refresh that touched guest rooms, dining, the spa and the grounds themselves, without disturbing the bones of a luxe getaway that made it a destination in the first place.

Start with the golf. The Old Course’s first tee sits in the same spot it has occupied since 1892, longer than any other continuously operating first tee in America. It’s part of a layout later reworked by two Golden Age giants, William S. Flynn and Donald Ross. A short drive away, the Flynn-design Cascades unspools through the mountains, all compelling angles and elevation changes with a lofty reputation to match. It ranks 35th on GOLF’s list of Top 100 Courses You Can Play, making it the highest-rated public-access course in Virginia. Combined with the Old Course, it’s all the championship-caliber golf that you can ask for, classically designed, ideal for walking, and all the more alluring in the shoulder seasons. In springtime, as nature awakens from its slumber, the trees lining the fairways fill with birdsong. Come autumn, when the weather turns wonderfully crisp, foliage sets the area ablaze with color.

But just as golf was never the whole story for Snead, it’s not the only pull for visitors today. Outdoor activities abound, including guided fly fishing outings in the same waters where Snead loved to cast his line. The surrounding mountains that framed Snead’s boyhood are laced with hiking trails, now easier to access thanks to the resort’s post-renovation trail and outdoors program, offering everything from an easy morning leg-stretcher to a more ambitious ridge hike with stunning panoramas of the mountains. And after the exertion, there’s the spa, one of the oldest in the country, drawing on the same natural mineral springs that gave the surrounding town of Hot Springs its name and that have been pulling visitors, U.S. presidents among them, to this stretch of Virginia since long before Snead picked up a golf club.

That distinctive mix of outdoor adventure and stress-reducing relaxation is by design, in keeping with the theme of Omni’s prestigious and expanding golf portfolio. The Homestead is one of three Omni properties to earn a spot on GOLF’s list of Top 100 Golf Resorts in the World, alongside Omni Barton Creek Resort & Spa in Austin and Omni PGA Frisco Resort & Spa, the new home of the PGA of America outside Dallas. Altogether, the the collection now spans nearly 30 courses across a dozen resorts nationwide, with designs from architects ranging from Donald Ross and A.W. Tillinghast to modern names like Tom Fazio, Gil Hanse, and Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw.

Like Slammin’ Sammy, people come for the golf and stay for more.

For a buddies’ group, that’s the pitch: an invigorating trip that quickens your pulse but lowers your blood pressure, an active escape that also gives you room to do nothing at all. Test yourself on the same courses where generations of golfers have played before you. Chase Snead’s course record on the Cascades, or at least tell yourself you have a shot. Then close out the day the way Snead might have, rod in hand, mountains going gold at dusk, trading fish stories for golf stories. No need to embellish. At the Omni Homestead, the holds up nicely on its own.

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The post Inside the greatest golf clubhouses in America: a video tour of 5 iconic designs appeared first on Golf.

It started with Shinnecock Hills.

When the Long Island club opened its clubhouse in 1892, it wasn’t just unveiling a handsome new building. It was opening what is widely regarded as the first golf clubhouse in the United States.

Like the championship course it overlooks, architect Stanford White’s design sits naturally in its surroundings, its wood-shingled exterior and wraparound veranda as graceful as they are understated, framing sweeping views of the links and the Atlantic beyond.

It was the first in its category, but hardly the last.

Over the next century-plus, thousands of clubhouses rose across America. Some were built for little more than function — cinderblock boxes with a pro shop and a snack bar. Others became architectural statements, steeped in history, personality and place.

Over the past year, GOLF.com has stepped inside some of the game’s most memorable clubhouses to see what makes them special.

At Oakmont, our videographers wandered halls lined with priceless memorabilia, passed beneath the watchful portrait of founder Henry Fownes and into a locker room where the wooden benches still bear spike marks from the likes of Ben Hogan and Jack Nicklaus.

At Sleepy Hollow, in New York’s Hudson Valley, we documented the evolution — and Gilded Age elegance — of a clubhouse that began its life as a Vanderbilt mansion.

At the Olympic Club, our cameras captured not one but two iconic homes: the stately clubhouse overlooking the Lake Course on San Francisco’s western edge and the grand downtown athletic club that has been a pillar of the city’s sporting scene for generations.

In Scottsdale, we explored Desert Mountain, where architect Bob Bacon walked us through the thinking behind a masterpiece that beautifully blurs the boundary between indoor and outdoor spaces.

Last but far from least, we turned our lenses on The Bridge, the exclusive Long Island club whose striking modernist clubhouse breaks from convention in all the right ways.

The result is a series of videos that goes beyond standard guided tours, offering an inside look at clubhouses that are as remarkable for their architecture as they are for the stories they inspire.

And though we have yet to produce video devoted exclusively to Shinnecock Hills’ clubhouse, we have filmed the experience of visiting the club, from its landmark clubhouse to its legendary links. You can watch that video here.

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