Is Williamsburg the Most Underrated Golf Destination in America?

There’s a difference between places you go to play golf and places you go for a golf trip.  

The first requires a great course. The second requires several of them, somewhere comfortable to stay, something worth eating after 18 holes, and enough beyond the fairways to turn a few tee times into a proper long weekend. Without all the crowds or overhyped price tags.    

Williamsburg, Virginia, checks every box. 

Set among the rolling landscapes of Virginia’s Historic Triangle, Williamsburg is home to more than a dozen championship golf courses, with layouts designed by some of the biggest names to ever sketch a fairway. Arnold Palmer, Jack Nicklaus, and Robert Trent Jones Sr., to name a few. 

Then there’s everything surrounding them. Resorts. Restaurants. Wineries. Craft breweries. Busch Gardens Williamsburg. And, of course, the extraordinary American history of it all. 

Great courses get you there. Everything around them turns the tee times into a trip.   

So why doesn’t Williamsburg come up more often when golfers start planning their next getaway? It should. 

The first requirement of any great golf destination is obvious. You need enough good golf to make packing the clubs worthwhile. Williamsburg clears that hurdle rather comfortably.   

Among the courses highlighted by Visit Williamsburg are Golden Horseshoe Golf Club, the River Course at Kingsmill Resort, Colonial Heritage Golf Club, and Kiskiack Golf Club. Together, they’re part of a collection of more than a dozen championship courses scattered throughout the region. 

And there are some serious names attached to those fairways. 

Jack Nicklaus. Arnold Palmer. Robert Trent Jones Sr. The sort of designers whose names on a scorecard tell you plenty before you’ve even put a tee in the ground. 

The result is something every golf trip needs but doesn’t always have. Options. 

You can make golf the main event without simply replaying the same course every morning. Build a long weekend around a few different rounds. Make one the marquee tee time. Leave another afternoon open. Play 36 if the weather’s perfect and nobody’s back is complaining yet. 

Or don’t.   

Because one of Williamsburg’s greatest strengths as a golf destination is what happens when you put the clubs away.

A golf trip can technically consist of nothing more than golf, dinner, sleep, repeat. But the memorable ones usually don’t. 

Williamsburg gives you good reason to make the afternoon tee time the opening act. The region’s golf offerings sit alongside waterfront dining, wineries, craft breweries, shopping and a wide range of places to stay. And if your foursome’s preferred recovery method involves roller coasters rather than cold beverages, there’s always Busch Gardens Williamsburg. 

That’s before getting to the thing Williamsburg is already famous for. History. The Historic Triangle of Williamsburg, Jamestown, and Yorktown puts some of the country’s foundational stories within easy reach. You can walk historic streets, step aboard ships like those that carried early settlers across the Atlantic, explore battlefields, visit historic taverns, and experience places connected to figures including Captain John Smith and George Washington. 

That isn’t a detour from the golf trip. It’s part of what makes this particular golf trip different. 

There are plenty of destinations where you can play a beautiful course and have a great dinner afterward. There aren’t many where the hours between the two can include standing in places that helped shape the country. 

Williamsburg doesn’t have to choose between being a history destination and a golf destination. The combination is the point. 

Golfers aren’t exactly short on bucket-list destinations. There are the pilgrimages everybody knows. The famous resorts. The courses you’ve watched on television for years. The trips your group chat has been threatening to organize. 

Williamsburg offers something a little different. 

More than a dozen championship courses. Designs from Palmer, Nicklaus, and Robert Trent Jones Sr. Luxury hotels and waterfront resorts. Food and drinks worth sticking around for. And an entire region full of experiences that can make the hours after the final putt every bit as memorable as the round itself. 

That’s a remarkably complete golf trip. 

And perhaps “underrated” is really just another way of saying you should get there before everyone else figures it out.