Bay Creek: Palmer Course
Bay Creek: Palmer Course
1 Clubhouse Way
Cape Charles, VA 23310-2399
United States
Overview
The 7,250-yard Arnold Palmer-designed course at Bay Creek is located on Virginia’s Eastern Shore, featuring exquisite topography and expansive views of the Chesapeake Bay and Old Plantation Creek. The adjacent Jack Nicklaus course is now just nine holes but well worth playing. The Palmer course, currently ranked 20th in Golf Digest’s Best in State rankings, was in America’s 100 Greatest Public courses in 2003.
About
Panelists
Ratings from our panel of 1,900 course-ranking panelists
100 GREATEST/BEST IN STATE SCORES
Shot Options
Character
Challenge
Layout Variety
Fun
Aesthetics
Conditioning
Reviews
Review
“Love the visuals of the bunkers down to the water. Just enough risk/reward to keep it interesting for the better player. A very enjoyable layout."
Read More2024
Review
“The Palmer course at Bay Creek in Cape Charles, VA is a delight to play, and the seclusion of the locale is part of the delight. The interior of the course is beautiful, with ponds and marshes, a large variety of flowering plants, numerous shorebirds, and some great views of the Chesapeake Bay from among the sand dunes. The golf provides a mix of wide open fairways and greens to tight, challenging layups and some tough forced carries into what is usually a strong, prevailing headwind. After surviving the tough opening holes along the beach into the wind, you get a respite with some wide open, downwind holes and a chance to recoup your round. After some nice holes before and after the turn, the ending kind of fizzles until you get to 18, which is a somewhat inexplicable par 5 with a layup followed by a “cape” approach shot to a green dangling close to the water. You may need to play this hole a few times to figure it out, as it’s not at all obvious from the tee."
Read More2023
Review
“The Palmer course at Bay Creek Resort has a variety of short, intermediate, and long Par 3s, 4s and 5s leaving one to use a multitude of shots throughout your round. Even though you can feel a strong breeze off of the Chesapeake Bay throughout your round, each hole has its own distinctive characteristics. The round starts off by taking you directly to the Bay before turning inward into a more tree lined back nine. You will be faced with different wind directions, as the routing does a nice job of changing directions throughout your round."
Read More2022
Review
“Palmer has crafted a challenging design nestled in between the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean. The combination of beach shell lined cart paths, stone wall banked greens (#3 & 12), bunkers feeding into water hazards (#4, 8, 11, 13 and 18), strategically positioned pine trees (#2, 5, 8 & 16) and bay views (#2-6) present an aesthetically masterful layout. Three holes rival signature status. The par-4 3rd demands a targeted (but blind) fade off the tee to peninsula fairway setting up a mid/long iron draw into a narrow water-fronted green. The 8th creates a conundrum from the seldom-used back tees, as any closer box plays naturally for a draw but a lone 80' pine tree negates this option from this distant and angled position. The closing hole resembles the shot making excellence of the par-5 18th at Pebble Beach both strategically as well as visually. If there was a way to incorporate holes #3-5 from the sister Nicklaus 9-hole course (the 5th being a design architecture work of art with coastline, tree defense and sandy fescue galore), half the category scores would be elevated by a tenth to a quarter of a point."
Read More2020
Review
“Like the sister Nicklaus course, great playing environment and in decent shape despite recent weather. Not in quite as good a shape as the Nicklaus course but it’s a little less penal and usually more fun to play."
Read More2018
Review
“Some good holes. Some strange holes. Good condition on a rolling property bordering the Chesapeake Bay."
Read More2018
