Best golf courses near Charlottesville, VA

Birdwood is a unique course that typifies the multi-purpose direction that future golf developments would be wise to study. Located about 10 minutes from downtown Charlottesville, it’s a convenient, upscale public course (green fees: $75-$125) that serves as an amenity to an adjacent resort, with a walkable routing across interesting and varied land. It’s also the home course for the University of Virginia golf teams boating state-of-the-art practice facilities, including a new par-3 course called “The Nest.” Originally opened in 1984, Davis Love III, along with brother Mark and lead designer Scot Sherman, re-routed and re-engineered the entire course, forging new holes out of previously unused forest. Rolling across the attractive northern Virginia countryside with long fescue grass buffers, the holes are infused with references to Pete Dye and classical-era template presentations. The Charlottesville, Va., layout hosted the 1991 U.S. Women's Amateur Public Links.

There’s an admirable polish and sophistication to the holes at Spring Creek as they wind attractively through a quiet property of hardwoods and pine, with the first nine circling out broadly through undisturbed nature and the second moving out and back along the Spring Branch stream. Winner of Golf Digest’s Best New Public Course Under $75 in 2007, the scale and positioning of the bunkering, for reference, brings to mind Bethpage Black, while the topography of streams and ravines recall Mike Strantz’s no-longer-open Stonehouse on the opposite side of Richmond, which won the magazine’s Best New Upscale Course in 1996. Most greens are angled to the line of play and present a decision between playing to a safe, open side or a challenging side only accessible through strategic positioning and precision.

Pete and Alice Dye’s renovations to an existing Arnold Palmer course at the 600-acre boutique Keswick Hall resort opened in 2014—garnering a ranking inside Golf Digest’s top 20 in Virginia ever since. Located just outside of Charlottesville on a serene piece of land with vistas of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Dyes’ minimalist design offers options off the tee and open approaches to run balls onto greens if desired, but challenges golfers that are off line with tough, small bunkers.