Within a day’s drive or short flight of Washington, DC, are some of the world’s finest golf resorts. Set in beautiful, unspoiled natural surroundings, these destinations cater to elite travelers used to luxurious accommodations and the best in service, international cuisine and recreational programs. In response to a trend, some offer organizational leadership courses. All this ensures you won’t hunt for things to do. But if your goal is just to sit and relax, you might want to take high tea in the gracious lounge of the hotel or sip a mint julep after your round on the clubhouse patio overlooking the golf course.

     The golf courses at these destinations are superlative. For sure, they will be among the best you will ever play. Some are ranked among the top one- or two-hundred in the World. All can be found on some award-winning list.

     Maybe your game is not immediately up to the challenge of such courses. Then, consider taking lessons or attending the resort golf school serviced by outstanding practice facilities and some of the best instructors in the industry. Golf packages designed to accommodate widely varying needs, pocketbooks and time schedules are worth looking into.

     The golf travel market can be a demanding one, but these destinations exceed the challenges with their extensive history and experience at the zenith of the resort universe. Is it time for a quick weekend getaway? An extended stay vacation? If so, pack your bags and golf clubs and get out of town.

Keswick Hall at Monticello
701 Club Drive
Charlottesville, VA 22947
www.Keswick.com
(800) 274-5391

     Keswick Hall at Monticello, located five miles east of Charlottesville, Va., is a small, intimate resort. Set on 600 rolling and wooded acres in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Keswick Hall at Monticello is on Conde Nast Traveler magazine’s 2002 Gold List of "the world’s best places to stay." The resort’s resplendently furnished Italianate guest house is complemented by an exceptionally designed and challenging Arnold Palmer golf course; tennis, fitness and massage facilities; an Olympic size outdoor pool; an indoor-outdoor pool; saunas and spas; and a candlelit dining room with a world-class wine cellar.

     The Virginia countryside around Keswick is a virtual Eastman Johnson landscape. The main guest house offers mesmerizing views of the forested foothills and is on a hilltop directly overlooking the golf course and croquet lawn. The house is designed in Tuscan architectural style, complete with arches leading out to wide patios beautified with colorful flowers and plants. The mansion is reminiscent of the finest European style country estates.

     Formerly owned by Englishman Sir Bernard Ashley, the property was purchased in 1999 by Orient Express Hotels, a hotel and leisure company focused on the luxury end of the leisure market. In addition to its 29 individual and distinctive hotels worldwide, the Bermuda-registered, London-based company operates six tourist trains and two world famous restaurants including The "21" Club in New York City.

     The 48 rooms of the estate house are each individually decorated from the finest of the famed Laura Ashley collection. Tapestries, fine paintings and other art collections, and Queen Anne furniture grace these rooms, some of which have balconies overlooking the patio and golf course. The public rooms, including the morning room where afternoon tea is served daily, the library and the snooker room offer a distinctly home-like atmosphere where guests are encouraged to browse the expansive book collection, play snooker, or relax over tea or cordials.

     At Keswick, the service is impeccable but informal. Here, there is an unhurried atmosphere where the only interruption to the peace and tranquility is the periodic whistle of a nearby train, a charming and romantic interlude to the presiding quiet.

As for golf, guests are issued temporary memberships in Keswick Golf Club, a private 600-member club located a chip shot from the guest house. The club offers American bistro-style dining, in addition to the golf facility--an 18-hole Arnold Palmer redesign of an Fred Findlay layout. Findlay designed the nearby Farmington County Club course as well as other popular Virginia courses.

     The Palmer team retained all the natural features of the land but tweaked the original design with new bent grass greens, additional bunkers, Bermuda fairways and more pronounced elevation changes. The course is one of the best conditioned courses you will ever play. It is only 6300 yards from the back tees but it has a relatively high slope of 126, largely because the greens slope precipitously. Yet, the course was designed to be enjoyed by golfers of all skill levels and is, in fact, ideal for the casual golfer or golfing couple.

     The proximity to Charlottesville and its attractions, notably Monticello, the home of Thomas Jefferson, and the University of Virginia, adds to Keswick Hall at Monticello’s appeal.

Kingsmill
1010 Kingsmill Rd.
Williamsburg, VA 23185
(800) 832-5665
www.Kingsmill.com

     When you walk up the tree-lined fairway of the 383-yard 14^th hole of the River Course at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Va., you might notice the vestiges of a path on the right near the woods. During Colonial times, farmers would transport their harvest in wagons to a mill over this path called the "Quarterpath Road" from the James River north over a line now marked by holes 13-17. The chimney of the old mill is visible off the 13^th hole, a picturesque 179 one-shotter from a tee box beside a creek and pond surrounded by thick woods to a heavily bunkered elevated green flanked right by a steep ravine.

     Golfers who enjoy parkland courses that thread along and through magnificent scenery of old trees, rolling hills, creeks and ponds, and a wide river, will find a bit of heaven on Pete Dye’s River Course, site of the PGA Tour’s Michelob Championship. Golfers who also love American history will have their imaginations fired as they walk over ground trod by Colonial settlers and soldiers of the American Revolution and Civil War.

     Not many golf courses can boast having designated historical and archeological sites, but the resort’s River and Plantation courses, as well as other areas of the resort property, have a slew of them.

     On the rise left of the River Course’s signature 17^th , a 177-yard, tree-lined par 3 that looks high out over the James River, is the restored brick foundation of a tavern which was formerly called an "ordinary." Until it was burned to the ground in 1776, it was the Colonial version of the modern clubhouse, a place where local settlers gathered to discuss the affairs of the day over drafts of beer and shots of whiskey.

     Immediately above and left of the elevated tee box on #17 is an earthen fortification used during the American Revolution and the Civil War. With a little imagination, players teeing it up on this imposing hole can hear the musket shots as Union and Confederate troops exchange gunfire.

     Archeologists excavating the river bluffs east of the #18 tee box found stone tools, pottery and other pre-historic artifacts of Indian dwellers. These and many other historical items are on display at the resort.

     The close connection between past and present is a unique feature of Kingsmill, a Mobil 4-Star 2900-acre resort that offers 54 holes of the best parkland golf you will experience at any U.S. resort. In addition to the River course, a true championship test, and the very user-friendly Arnold Palmer-designed Plantation Course, the resort boasts the Woods Course, a Tom Clark-Curtis Strange collaboration which some say is the most popular layout on site.

     Kingsmill Resort’s amenities also include a superb tennis center, fishing, sailing, and a state-of-the-art health spa and fitness center with racquetball courts, a weight room, and massage and salon services. A conference center can handle good-sized business meetings. There is also swimming at indoor and outdoor pools by the main building and at a riverside beach where the marina is located.

     Miles of hiking and biking trails meander through the tall forests and around the ponds and creeks of this property rich in unspoiled, protected natural beauty. In addition, the resort, whose accommodations include luxury riverside suites with kitchenettes and rooms and villas near the tennis center, provides transportation to Williamsburg’s outstanding attractions including Busch Gardens (on site), a winery west of the city, and Colonial Williamsburg.

The Homestead
220 Main St.
Box 2000
Hot Springs, VA 24445
www.thehomestead.com

     When you visit this imposing and elegant Georgian hotel in the heart of Virginia’s Allegheny Mountains, you join a list of some of the most prominent Americans to have stayed at The Homestead. No less than 20 US presidents have vacationed here, including William McKinley and Woodrow Wilson, who spent his honeymoon at The Homestead and could be seen with his new bride early every morning teeing off on the Homestead Course. Great international figures have also come here to engage in sport and to relax.

     The earliest incarnation of this splendid resort was a mineral spa founded in 1776 by colonial settlers and further developed under a captain in Gen. George Washington’s army. The discoverers found here natural hot mineral springs therapeutic to body and soul.

     Investors led by illustrious banker J. Pierpont Morgan enabled the resort to flourish in the late 1880’s highlighted by the building of the grand hotel, the precursor of today’s modern edifice. The railroad opened up traffic to this remote mountain resort, and as more people came, activities such as hunting, fishing and horseback riding were added to the recreational mix. During the Pierpont era, Thomas Edison, who was a frequent guest of the resort, supplied it with its first electrical power.

     In 1892, six golf holes were built behind the hotel. Later, the famous Scottish architect Donald Ross was commissioned to design and build an 18-hole course, to be known as the Homestead Course. Modernized without compromising its original design integrity, the Homestead Course today is a delightful romp over hill and dale featuring Ross’s unmistakable Scottish trademarks of open-fronted greens and other links-style features.

     Several miles to the south near Covington, Va., are two additional Homestead layouts, the Cascades, a William S. Flynn design opened in 1923, and the Robert Trent Jones-designed Lower Cascades, opened in 1963. The Cascades Course has hosted seven USGA Championships including the US Women’s National Open. It is listed in Golf Digest’s Top 50 Courses and is arguably the finest mountain course in the world. Do not play this course without your camera. It is THAT scenic.

     In the early 1990’s, after a century of prosperity, the hotel, spa, casino, and grounds showed the deteriorating effects of time. Just when friends of the resort feared the worst, it was rescued by Club Corporation of America. In 1993, The Pinehurst Company, a ClubCorp subsidiary which also owns and operates Pinehurst Resort and Country Club among other signature travel destinations, purchased The Homestead and restored it to its original grandeur while upgrading existing amenities and adding new ones, such as the huge outdoor pool and corporate team-building programs. Also, improvements were made to the resort’s ski area.

     As for the business minded, the resort has hosted some major meetings of international importance, including the United Nations Conference on Food and Agriculture. The resort can accommodate small meetings to business gatherings of considerable size.

     Straw-hatted men and women toting flower guidebooks around a golf course is not usual, but then Baywood Greens, for all its floral opulence, is no garden variety track. The course is adorned from first tee to 18th green with an estimated 200,000 thousand planted trees, flowers and shrubs including rhododendron, 2500 azaleas, and 4,000 rose bushes. There are 20 acres of planted annuals and perennials include zinnias, bachelor buttons, poppies, mums, day lilies and a mind-boggling 40,000 daffodils. Also, the place is beautified with meadows of multi-colored wildflowers.

The Greenbrier
300 West Main St.
White Sulphur Springs, W. VA 24986
(800) 453-4858
www.greenbrier.com

     Only 25 miles west as the crow flies and an hour by car through the mountains is The Greenbrier, a mountain retreat and a resort fit for royalty as well as enthusiastic travelers who like tea in the afternoon, fabulous golf on three superb courses, world class cuisine, and much more.

     Like The Homestead, the Greenbrier history is rooted in colonial times when settlers discovered the medicinal properties of the warm mineral springs here. Purchased and expanded in 1910 by the C&O Railroad, the resort was converted to an army hospital during WW II. In secret, the US government used the 6500-acre retreat after the attack at Pearl Harbor as a place of internment for Japanese and German embassy personal before their repatriation to their home countries. This program continued through mid 1942.

     While golfers everywhere understand the "bunker," the term has a different connotation at The Greenbrier. At the height of the Cold War during the late 1950’s, the Eisenhower Administration adopted an emergency relocation plan to transfer members of Congress to The Greenbrier in case of a nuclear attack on Washington, DC. Here, they could continue to conduct the nation’s business safely and secretly.

     While contractors were busy putting on an addition to the hotel above ground, construction was proceeding in secrecy below. The huge bunker was built of 5 foot thick concrete walls and included meeting rooms and dormitories. It also had its own power and water supply. The relocation plan was abandoned in 1992, and today the bunker is a tourist attraction and administrative office site.

     At the Greenbrier, as at The Homestead, it was the railroad that first enabled hosts of visitors to come to this part of the world to enjoy such activities as hunting, fishing, horseback riding, and bathing in the natural warm springs. Today, the resort is owned by Richmond-based CSX Corporation.

     Golf at The Greenbrier is what you would expect of a world class resort. There are three courses all right at the resort complex. Designed for every level of golfer, the courses meander out over this magnificent property within the shadow of the Allegheny Mountains. They include The Old White Course, a traditional Charles Blair MacDonald design opened in 1913 that features open routes to the greens, and The Meadows Course, designed by Dick Wilson in 1962 and revamped in 1999 by Robert Cupp.

     The resort’s signature course is The Greenbrier Course, a 1924 Seth Raynor creation that was redesigned by Jack Nicklaus in 1977. The course hosted the 1979 Ryder Cup matches and the 1994 women’s Solheim Cup competition.

     For most of his professional life, Hot Springs native Sam Snead was The Greenbrier’s host golf professional. "Guests would pay dearly to play a round of golf with Snead," declared resort historian Bob Conte. "Snead loved to take their money and guests opened their wallets willingly for the privilege of playing with arguably the greatest golfer of his era. After the round, Snead would invite his guests into the pub and entertain them for hours with his colorful stories. Today, that pub, which houses Snead memorabilia, is named after the great Slammer.

     Beyond the resort’s recreational offerings, The Greenbrier, which has 72,000 square feet of meeting and exhibit space, annually hosts some of the biggest meetings in the corporate and association worlds. And in early 2002, it hosted a large Republican Party retreat attended by the Republican presidential ticket.

The Greenbrier has a legion of awards including #1 Family Resort in North America and Top 100 hotels in the World, according to a Travel & Leisure Magazine readership poll.

     The Greenbrier lies conveniently just off I-81 in southeastern West Virginia. Also, Amtrak has three trains a week from Union Station to the depot at White Sulphur Springs, which is just across the street from the hotel. Valet service is available as well to and from the nearby Lewisburg air field.

Nemacolin Woodlands Resort & Spa
1001 Lafayette Drive
Farmington, PA 15437
(800) 422-2736
www.nwlr.com

     Pete Dye is an elite name in golf course architecture. He has built hundreds of the most scenic, and some would say most difficult, courses in the world. The list of his signature designs includes Sawgrass in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., site of The Players Championship; the Ocean Course on Kiawah Island, SC., site of the ’91 Ryder Cup matches; and The Straits Course at Whistling Straits, set to host the 2004 PGA Championship.

     Nemacolin Woodlands Resort can boast yet another Pete Dye creation, Mystic Rock, named after the natural rock outcropping visible on this course set in the beautiful Laurel Highland Mountains in southwestern Pennsylvania. Mystic Rock has all the Dye trademarks of greatness and confounding obstacles – dramatic elevation changes and imaginatively designed holes shaped around water and rocks and among mature hardwood forests.

     Mystic Rock is the signature course of this Laurel Highland Mountain resort named after a Delaware Indian chief who carved a trail through the mountains near here. The trail, which now forms part of state Route 40, was later used by George Washington during the French and Indian Wars.

     In the 19^th Century, the Laurel Highlands became the fashionable retreat of wealthy Pittsburghers including the famous retail Kaufmann family, which commissioned Frank Lloyd Wright to build Fallingwater as an escape from the city. The unique cantilevered house with a stream running through it is close to the resort.

     A fish and hunting preserve before it became a resort, Nemacolin Woodlands under lumber industrialist Joseph A. Hardy Sr. was expanded in the late 1980’s and 1990’s to include a large conference center, a 125-room chateau-style hotel, an equestrian center with outdoor and indoor rings, a lake with fishing and other marine activities, a 55,000-square-foot shopping arcade, and a "Kidz Club" facility and a full-service spa. Accommodations also include a lodge and rental properties with golf views.

     The resort has 36 holes. In addition to the Dye Course, the Links Course is a windswept Scottish style layout that also incorporates mountain vistas.

     Located north of Cumberland, Md., off State Route 40, the resort is served by a private airfield close by. Landing reservations may be made through the resort’s security department.