Virginia golf vacation resorts bring best of both worlds

10. Virginia golf vacation resorts bring best of both worlds

Picking Virginia as a golf destination is like having the best of both worlds of the mountain and the sea, and an encounter with the old and the new. This twin spectrum is one of the reasons why the golf vacation resorts of Virginia have become sunshine ventures drawing an increasing multitude of tourist-golfers.

The Shenandoah Valley Golf Club is a mountain course most enamored by the unwinding corporate golfers who relish the breath-taking panorama afforded so generously by the Blue Ridge and Massanuten mountains. It has been host to corporate fun golf tournaments for such multinational giants as Boeing, TRW and Exxon/Mobil.

Meanwhile, in seaside golf resorts of Virginia Beach, tourists and locals alike pit their fairway wits in courses singing paeans of praises to sun, surf and sea. Some of these rare gems are in historic Hot Springs Virginia whose supposedly medicinal spring water flows all the way from the Allegheny Highlands.

It has been said the first US resorts were built here in the mid-18th century at the aptly named Bath County to cater to folks who flock in the area for Virginia’s medicinal springs. And from such greenfield undertaking rose the Homestead which traces its ancestry to 1766, and in these contemporary times prescribes a championship layout therapeutic remedy to the travel-weary.

The Homestead has three courses one of which is the nostalgic Old Course, home to the longest-existing tee mound in American golf history, and presenting small greens demanding radar-like precision to hit. Still, reserve some energy for the Homestead–Cascades, the top US mountain course which was title hunting grounds for seven USGA tournaments and two NCAA nationals. These are but a few of the several major competitions that amateurs and pros wish for and rave about, and winding up a Virginia visit with a round of play at the Cascades should cure any more cravings for better golf vacation resorts.