Indiana
This resort in southern Indiana is home to a trio of diverse courses that offers something to satisfy any discerning golfer, but its championship routing, the Pete Dye Course (above, photo: Evan Schiller), is in a class of its own. Set atop a series of ridges that, in some areas, can provide 20- and 30-mile-long vistas, the 8,100-yard layout (yes, you read that right) is surprisingly walkable, thanks to the more than 2.5 million cubic yards of dirt that Dye and his team moved during construction to soften the extreme elevation changes. That said, the course’s length—and its ribbonlike fairways bordered by deep ravines—makes low scores hard to come by.
Hawaii
Old Hawaii is alive and well on Lanai, a mostly private island that’s home to historic Lanai City, empty beaches, abundant marine life, and two completely different Four Seasons resorts. Sensei Lanai is a wellness retreat set in the pine-covered mountains of the island’s interior. Four Seasons Resort Lanai, meanwhile, sits majestically above Hulopo‘e Bay, the lone beach resort on one of Hawaii’s most alluring islands. Here, too, is the rightfully renowned Manele Golf Course, a Jack Nicklaus Signature design that hugs the lava outcroppings and cliffs high above the bay. (The course is open to guests of both resorts.) Chances are, you’ll lose a golf ball or two—several tees require forced carries—but you’ll likely see dolphins while playing one of the most enjoyable rounds of your life.
Oregon
“At Bandon, you can hear people having discussions about the best and worst courses at the resort,” says architect Bill Coore. “Each course has its own following, particularly amongst people who’ve played there more than once. I just know of no other place in the world like it.”
Since the resort’s eponymous course opened in 1999, it and all of the subsequent full-length layouts—Pacific Dunes, Old Macdonald, Bandon Trails, and Sheep Ranch—have wooed different groups of golf-obsessed travelers. In time, the same will be said for the newest course at Bandon Dunes, Shorty’s, which is a masterpiece of golf in miniature form. The 19-hole short course was designed by WAC Golf and tumbles over and around a swath of dramatically shaped dunes and ridges, answering the hypothetical musing of what golf might look like in the land of hobbits.
Virginia
Since it opened for play a century ago, the Cascades Course at the Omni Homestead Resort has been reason enough for golfers to make the pilgrimage to western Virginia. Thanks to Omni’s ongoing restoration and renovation efforts—a project that commenced in 2021 and has since surpassed $150 million—the list of reasons to visit this historic resort keeps growing.
Almost two dozen U.S. presidents have visited the Homestead, including Thomas Jefferson, who stayed there for three weeks in 1818, frequently soaking in the mineral-rich Warm Springs Pools. President William McKinley, the first sitting president to play golf, teed it up on the resort’s Old Course (originally a Donald Ross design) in 1899; less than 10 years later, President William Howard Taft, a frequent Homestead guest, established golf as the most favored presidential sport.
As for the Cascades Course, the 6,908-yard William Flynn layout is home to several compelling holes, not least of which is the 10th, a dogleg par 4 that Arnold Palmer deemed one of his 54 favorite holes in America. Palmer’s predecessor, Sam Snead, called the Cascades home for the entirety of his career, serving as the Homestead’s first resident golf professional. “If you can play the Cascades,” he declared, “you can play anywhere.”
Montana
Measuring an even 8,000 yards from the back tees and situated across 800 acres, this Jack Nicklaus Signature golf course in Big Sky, Montana, offers wide fairways and friendly contouring. Its Rocky Mountain setting (at an altitude of 7,500 feet) means that the course looks more menacing on the scorecard than it actually plays—and guarantees an enjoyable round no matter your score. “A lot of the land here is preserved,” says golf photographer Evan Schiller. “You are surrounded by these 10,000-foot peaks, and there are no houses out there, so when you’re playing golf, you’re out in the wilderness.”
Wisconsin
The village of Kohler is synonymous today with five-star hospitality and championship golf. The latter took root when Herb Kohler hired Pete Dye to create the first of what would become four championship-caliber courses. “Pete was really married to the land,” the late Kohler once said. “In his mind, there was always strategy and the landscape—and how the course was positioned was very much a part of the strategy.”
In their conception of the Straits Course at Whistling Straits, the duo took inspiration from their golfing trips to Ireland and Scotland. Kohler wanted a course that rivaled Ballybunion, and he watched as Dye brought in more than 10,000 truckloads of sand to transform the otherwise flat parcel of land.
When the course opened in 1998, it was a trailblazer, as the majority of American resort courses at that time lacked the drama and dynamic shotmaking that were inherent to the Straits experience. Nearly three decades later, it remains a masterpiece of American golf by one of the game’s true visionaries. “I thought he was the greatest artist that I’d ever seen,” Kohler said of Dye.
Wisconsin
Some might argue that this Wisconsin golf resort shed its hidden-gem status before it even opened. As soon as word got out that Mike Keiser, the developer behind Bandon Dunes, had purchased 1,700 acres in the Central Sands region, expectations for another epic golf resort were set. Opened in 2017, Sand Valley did not disappoint—and today rivals its Oregonian cousin with four full-length courses designed by some of the game’s most prolific architects, a dynamic short course, a sprawling putting course, and even more golf amenities on the way. “The purity of the experience is like nothing else,” says David McLay Kidd, who designed the resort’s second full-length layout, Mammoth Dunes (left). “It’s all about—and only about—the golf.”
Utah
When Black Desert Resort opened in the spring of 2023, its 19-hole, 7,200-yard golf course represented the final piece of Tom Weiskopf’s design legacy. The late architect worked alongside his longtime associate Phil Smith on the routing of this unique course in Ivins, Utah, which is positioned against a backdrop of Snow Canyon State Park’s majestic red-rock mountains.
Black Desert’s pristine green fairways wend their way through the rugged landscape, punctuated throughout by vast stretches of black lava rock. Finding balls in those black rocks is an unlikely proposition—and playing out of them an impossible one. The many challenges that the course presents partly explain why Black Desert, just two years since its debut, is the only club to host annual events on both the PGA and LPGA Tours.
North Carolina
There are plenty of reasons why this North Carolina resort is considered the “cradle of American golf.” It starts with the revered No. 2 course, which has inspired and challenged golfers and golf architects for decades and was recently appointed to be the first anchor site of the U.S. Open. No. 2 may be the resort’s crown jewel, but there are nine other distinctive courses to be played and praised, none more attention-worthy than Pinehurst’s newest addition.
Built upon land that previously existed as a turn-of-the-20th-century mining operation, the No. 10 course (above) is the first new layout built at the resort in almost three decades. “The site is topographically distinct and drastically different from anywhere in Pinehurst,” says the course’s architect, Tom Doak, though he’s quick to acknowledge that the terrain still features several of the famed Sandhills region’s hallmarks. “The sand, the wiregrass, the bluestem grass, and other native grasses that grow around the Sandhills,” he says, “create a fabulous texture for golf.”
Florida
Streamsong is an anomaly among Florida golf resorts. The property occupies a former phosphate mine that remained undeveloped for years, and the stacked mounds and trenches that were left behind eventually revegetated. The result is a rugged landscape that looks completely natural—and yet completely out of place in the Sunshine State. “If you brought me in blindfolded,” says Tom Doak, who designed Streamsong’s Blue course, which opened in 2013, “Florida would’ve been the last state that I would’ve guessed I was in.”
In addition to Doak’s Blue, Streamsong features the Gil Hanse–designed Black course (right), the Red course by Bill Coore and Ben Crenshaw, and the design duo’s new 19-hole match-play short course, the Chain.
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