Great Golf In Virginia, From Classic To Brand New, Near Washington, D.C.

Compared to the Carolinas, Florida, Arizona, California, Oregon and the massively golf rich Midwestern states of Michigan and Wisconsin, Virginia often gets overlooked. But the Old Dominion state has a ton of great public golf, and a lot famous golf resorts such as Colonial Williamsburg, Kingsmill, Primland and the Homestead, along with golf dense areas such as Virginia Beach. The problem is that the big names are very spread out and in some cases remote, and especially far from the main gateway of the Nation’s Capital. Besides the DC area drive market, there are two airports just over the border in Virginia, Dulles, a major international and United hub with non-stop flights from just about every major city in the nation, and Ronald Reagan, which also has excellent non-stop connectivity. For this reason, there is a premium on a “Great Golf in Virginia” road trip easily done from DC and these airports, and that means the area southeast of the city, around Charlottesville, much closer than everything mentioned above, suitable for a long weekend or even an overnight. This is a “hidden gem” golf road trip hiding in plain sight that is now home to three notable and very different resorts: one large and affordable, one top tier luxury, and one small, growing and brand new. This trio offers great golf in Virginia that is easily accessed from the DC area, and the drive between each resort was less than an hour. Also, with the sole exception of high-altitude Devil’s Knob, all these courses remain open all winter, much further north than many people think of for year round golf. After a one-hour non-stop flight I was playing in shorts while the courses in my home state of Vermont were closing for the season, so there’s lot of appeal from Northern climates as well.

Great Golf In Virginia

The Affordable Classic: Wintergreen

Wintergreen is the largest of this trio, both in terms of golf and the resort itself. It is a four-season property in the Blue Ridge Mountains with a relatively large regional ski resort, a massive tennis center that has won it a ranking in the Top 50 Tennis Resorts from Tennis Magazine for the past 18 years (and Tennis Resorts Online puts it Top 25 in the World, as well as Top 15 for Pickleball, and Top 15 for Tennis Camps), several restaurants and bars, a spa, large fitness center, lake with watersports, and full resort facilities including a large network of hiking trails connecting to the nearby Appalachian Trail. Because it is a sprawling ski resort property laid out along a mountain access road, there is a wide range of lodging, from a main hotel to hundreds of condos and homes, and it is very affordable, especially for groups and families.

The golf consists of Devil’s Knob, an 18-hole course at the very top of the mountain that is the highest layout in all of Virginia, with dramatic elevation changes and sweeping views of the beautiful mountains and heavily wooded region. There is also a 27-hole layout by acclaimed designer Rees Jones, known as “The U.S. Open Doctor,” because he has long been the beloved choice of the USGA to ready layouts for its premier Major. There are well over a thousand golf resorts in the U.S., but less than a hundred with more than 36 holes (especially if you don’t count the growing number of miniaturized “short courses” or pitch and out layouts), and any resort with more is immediately in an elite group of the largest, which is very important to any golf traveler who values variety, which is most.

Wintergreen is so big that it is almost a half an hour drive between the two courses, but a scenic one, and given the resort’s location, just about everyone arrives here by car. However, they do have a fast, efficient and friendly free on-demand shuttle service within the resort that we utilized when enjoying adult beverages at dinner, and it was totally smooth.

Devil’s Knob is the more memorable and interesting of the layouts, with its unique mountaintop location at 3850 feet and the large elevation changes, but it is also considerably more difficult. Also, interestingly, this is one of the only courses in the eastern U.S where you can experience the thrill of the ball flying further at altitude like it does in the Rockies. Stoney Creek is much flatter, set down in the valley, but still has a lot of variety with doglegs and water hazards, and having the three nines effectively offers three different eighteen hole routings.

Unlike any of the other resorts profiled here, Wintergreen also has a full golf academy, and this kind of immersive instruction has become very popular among golfers seeking to improve—which is almost everyone who plays the devilish game. Options include the typical hourly lessons, plus daily 30-60 minute group clinics at both golf facilities, various one and two day immersion schools at the performance center at Stoney Creek, and a unique “Player Assessment Series,” which begins with a 9-hole on-course playing assessment with a PGA pro then three one hour lessons to improve the weaknesses they see.

One of the biggest appeals of Wintergreen is its setting in the famously attractive Blue Ridge mountains, with natural beauty all around, including lots of wildlife, deer everywhere and the occasional bear. The area immediately around the resort is a shockingly dense hotbed of craft brewing, distilling and slow smoked barbecue. There are half a dozen breweries. distilleries, cideries or combinations thereof just between the main resort and Stoney Creek, and it’s sort of a must to go out to dinner in this area at least once and sample the local fare, though Wintergreen itself has plenty of local adult beverages. Within the resort there are a lot of dining options, but oddly the two standout spots were both in the respective golf clubhouses rather than the main hotel or standalone, which is unusual. A family-owned casual grill at Stoney Creek makes exceptional sandwiches and clubhouse fare, including an entire menu of creative gourmet grilled cheese specialties, while Devil’s Knob houses the resort’s most elevated fine dining restaurant, one of those few places where the too frequent claim that “everything is good” actually rang true.

Wintergreen is the largest golf property within the portfolio of North American ski resort operator Pacific Group Resorts, which is well-known in the ski industry for its ethos of trying to keep skiing accessible, especially for families. I wrote about the company’s brand-wide skiing campaign, Mission Affordable, with sub $100 skiing at all its properties, including top shelf resorts like Jay Peak, VT, one of the nation’s perennial snowfall leaders, and Canada’s huge Silver Star, here at Forbes. Conde Nast Traveller magazine just ranked Silver Star the 5th best ski resort in North America for 2026, and second best in Canada, and it is by far the highest ranked at these prices. Wintergreen is in the same boat and offers a great value proposition for a resort with so much going on. Just as a memorable example, there is an onsite deli and market and we swung in to pick up some beers for the condo, and cans of local craft beer were three dollars. I’ve been to lots of golf (and ski) resorts where they would have been a bargain at twice that, and many that feel no shame in charging three or even four times as much—and it’s not just beer.

Like skiing, golf is a sport that in recent years has been pricing out a lot of its regular customers, and if you feel you are in that group, check out Wintergreen. Also, because most of the homeowners here are part-timers who come for summer and/or winter, fall is both slow and a fantastic time to play golf here, with less heat and beautiful fall foliage. Spring also has great weather, but minus the changing leaves. I went in late September, the place was empty, it was easy to get seated and served anywhere, they had flexibility on going off early and tee times, and low occupancy on lodging. And we wore shorts.

The Hot New Thing: Tributer Resort

Tributer is a brand new luxury residential community on large Lake Anna, a popular second home spot just over an hour from Dulles. It is the work of large developer Reef Capital Partners, which has built multiple successful and highly amenitized private golf communities, including several high-end ones in Park City, UT. Most Reef projects have been full private clubs and communities, but they also did the very highly acclaimed Sweetens Cove Golf Club in Tennessee and Black Desert in St. George, UT, one of the hottest new golf resorts in the country in the past few years and one that immediately landed a PGA Tour event, sparking the pro return to Utah. While it has a private club membership and residential component, Black Desert was Reef’s highest profile resort project, with a new hotel.

Tributer is the follow up to Black Desert, but instead of a hotel, all of the resort lodging is in 2-bedroom golf cottages and 4-bedroom golf villas, which is becoming the norm at many top golf resorts across the country, where conventional hotel rooms have been minimized or skipped over completely, from Bandon Dunes to Cabot Citrus Farms. The cottage model is great for golf groups, foursomes and couples, gives more space, more privacy, kitchens and in this case, a shockingly good value. The cottages, which comfortably sleep four, and even have specially built closets to hold golf clubs, were just $500 a night, and are very upscale and well appointed.

I’ll just say it: The Cutalong course at Tributer was my favorite, and in my very informed opinion, the best of the four and half I played on this trip. Even though it is not private by the standard definition used in golf rankings, since it opened before any of the lodging and there was no outside guest access, Golf Digest ranked it in the nation’s Top 5 New Private Courses last year. It was designed by architect Tom Clark in collaboration with famed golf architecture critic and writer Ron Whitten, whose similar collaboration in Wisconsin, Erin Hills, made every Top 100 list and was selected to host the U.S. Open.

Cutalong is an odd dual tribute to “Golden Age” golf designers such as C.B. Macdonald, Donald Ross and Alister MacKenzie, and the rich mining tradition of the area, which inspired its name. It includes grassy mounds left over from mining, an actual open mineshaft, black sand, and other “mining” inspired touches. But what makes it so good is the great variety of holes, the underlying feel of running shot links golf, the tiered undulating greens that were in great shape, and the fact that almost every hole is carved from a pristine setting and sits apart on its own. With just a handful of golf cottages and villas in the first phase, which opened this summer (as I said it is brand new), and a small membership but not a single home completed yet, it is delightfully uncrowded and should be for some time. We easily played in the morning, enjoyed a very leisurely lunch and played another eighteen in the afternoon, both with a high-quality forecaddie. Yet Cutalong gets as little as $150 in what was still high season, with discounted replay rates, and as it will probably be at least two years before a lot of the scheduled amenities (marina, shooting, spa, fitness club, more restaurants, etc.) arrive, it is likely to be one of the very best deals for golf and lodging at this level close to a major city that you will find. It’s a bargain at the luxury end of the golf spectrum for sure, and if you live in DC, get there while the getting is good, and if you are thinking about a drive market second home, there’s a lot here to think about.

The downside of this is that, for now, it is a pure golf proposition unlike the full family resort offerings of Wintergreen, or the broad slate of luxury options and activities at Keswick Hall (below). The main appeals are a wonderful golf course, a huge 18-hole natural grass putting course that is lighted for night play and fun after a few cocktails, wonderful lodging in cottages, and a single clubhouse restaurant that is very good, but there is no other dining venue, no gym, no spa and so on. Still, Tributer has a lot to recommend it and will just get better—they just announced a second eighteen by Tiger Woods. Despite a relative lack of experience, I found his first public course in the country to be stunning, and so did Golf Digest, which quickly ranked it in the top 100. I wrote in detail here at Forbes about what makes Tiger’s work so good (the title kind of gives it away: “Tiger Woods’ First Public U.S. Golf Course Is Awesome”), and I toured the site of his course at Tributer, and it’s a wonderful piece of land. Not everything improves with age, but I fully expect Tributer will.

Pure Luxury at Keswick Hall

Keswick Hall was a private country estate turned into an opulent boutique hotel by the Ashley family, as in designer Laura Ashley. It later became part of what used to be Orient-Express Hotels and is now Belmond, and that is what it was the last time I visited many years ago, and I thought it was wonderful. Just outside Charlotteville, it has always been the place to stay for University of Virginia graduation if you could afford it, the top spot. But now, under new ownership, it has gotten even better than I remember, and it was great back then.

Virginia local Molly Hardie bought it from Belmond and knows a thing or two about luxury resorts and golf. She also owns the venerable Hermitage, an acclaimed luxury hotel in Nashville, and her father owns the 90-hole Kiawah Island Resort, simply one of the world’s greatest golf resorts, home to five courses including the famed Ocean Course, a consensus Top 10, Ryder Cup and PGA Championship venue, as well as the triple Forbes 5-Star Sanctuary hotel with its 5-Star spa and very rare Forbes 5-Star steakhouse, the Ocean Room. As if that’s not enough, the family also owns Sea Pines Resort, the top golf destination on golf-mad Hilton Head Island, SC, home to the just revamped Harbor Town, longtime site of the PGA Tour’s RBC Heritage Classic, and the first design Jack Nickalus ever worked on (with Pete Dye).

That’s about as rich a golf and luxury hospitality history as a family can enjoy, and Hardie brought her experience to Keswick in a big way. How big? After buying it, she closed the resort for three and a half years to complete a $250 million renovation that redid every room, every public space, and added an entire new wing that doubled the capacity of the property from 40 to 80 rooms—still very small for the standout amenities. She added a large standalone spa and updated the tennis facilities significantly—they are now surfaced with the exact same red clay as Roland-Garros in Paris, host of the French Open.

Perhaps the biggest addition was an entirely new flagship fine dining restaurant, Marigold by Jean-Georges Vongerichten, a world-famous celebrity chef more associated with New York and Las Vegas than rural Virginia. It was excellent and surprisingly busy, as it has become a big local draw, with indoor and outdoor seating, as well as a lively central island bar you can dine at. Unlike many similar fancy hotel eateries at this level, Marigold is also open for breakfast and lunch. But for just 80 rooms Keswick has ample choices, with three restaurants and three bars plus a fast-serve market and coffee shop, and the food was exceptional throughout, and even the simpler fare at the Clubhouse Grill was excellent.

Some things have not changed. It still has that horse-country estate feel, you pull into a circular driveway in front of the main mansion, and valets scramble about hyper-efficiently parking the Maseratis and Porsches, while the house car fleet is loaner or chauffeured brand new BMWs. Staffing was high and there was always someone trying to do something for me, get my car, get my luggage, show me where something was and so on.

One of the big appeals of this region is that Keswick sits in the beating heart of the vibrant Virginia wine country, with around 60 vineyards within half an hour. Because the hotel offers half and full day drivers for its BMWs, this is a very popular outing and activity, though you can borrow one and drive yourself. It is also 30 minutes from Shenandoah National Park, and just outside Charlottesville, with all its shops and restaurants.

The golf course, Full Cry, was an Arnold Palmer design that was redone by Pete Dye in 2014 as one of his last projects, and it features some of his signature nefarious bunkering. It begins and ends just behind the hotel, and is both fun, well-conditioned and very enjoyable. It has hosted a number of tournaments, most recently the Virginia State Senior Championship last month. But for a Dye layout hosting tournaments it is quite playable and enjoyable, and the focus on conditioning is probably in part because Keswick also has a club membership, with service and practice facilities also elevated above typical resort golf standards, even luxury resort golf.

But while the golf is quite good, the strength of Keswick Hall as a golf resort is the resort itself: luxurious rooms are spacious and very well appointed, with large bathrooms of Italian marble featuring oversized walk-in rain showers, while suites add tubs. Half the rooms have outdoor balconies overlooking the golf course, and these are the most desirable. There is a big outdoor luxury pool complex with cabanas and a curved infinity pool overlooking the golf course, heated for year round use, with full cocktail and food service. In peak May to November season, it is adult-only, but there is a second, separate and large family pool area, plus pickleball. While it has plenty of family friendly amenities, Keswick Hall would be an exceptional couples destination, especially for couples who play golf. There is plenty of great golf in Virginia, but as much as I hate to say it, given how much I love golf, Keswick is also a great choice for not playing golf at all.

This article was originally published on Forbes.com