Williamsburg, Virginia

Williamsburg occupies an unusual position in the American golf landscape. It is a small city known primarily for the 301-acre living history museum at its center, a place where costumed interpreters demonstrate colonial trades and tourists walk streets laid out in the 18th century. But within a 30-minute drive of the historic area sit six golf courses designed by Pete Dye, Robert Trent Jones Sr., Rees Jones, Arnold Palmer, Mike Strantz, and Jim Lipe. The design talent is disproportionate to the destination's profile, and that gap is precisely what makes Williamsburg interesting for golfers willing to look beyond the obvious resort corridors.

The area operates on a different rhythm than Hilton Head or Myrtle Beach. There is no strip of daily-fee courses competing on price. Instead, the courses cluster around two anchors: Kingsmill Resort on the James River and Golden Horseshoe Golf Club on the grounds of Colonial Williamsburg. Each has its own character, history, and reason for existing. The public courses, Royal New Kent and Williamsburg National, fill in the map with options that range from audacious links-inspired design to solid mid-range daily-fee golf.