Kingsmill Resort: The River Course

The River Course is the championship course at Kingsmill Resort in Williamsburg, Virginia, laid out by Pete Dye on land that runs down to the James River. The resort describes it as a Golf Digest top 100 course in America, and for more than three decades it has hosted the best players in the world on both the PGA Tour and the LPGA Tour.

Its best-known hole is the 17th, a par three perched on the edge of the James River that television viewers will recognise from tournament coverage. In 2004 Dye came back to fine-tune his original design: he added tees so golfers of every level can enjoy it, reshaped the fairway bunkering on several holes and resurfaced and recontoured the greens so they putt faster and smoother.

Green fees include the cart, the round and use of the practice facility on the day you play, and range balls are part of every round. Pace of play is set at four to four and a half hours, with an extra half hour on cart-path-only days; the superintendent decides each morning whether carts can go on the fairways. Coolers and outside food and drink are not allowed, apart from bottled water.

The River Course is one of three at Kingsmill: the Plantation Course is an Arnold Palmer and Ed Seay design, and the Woods Course is for members only. The Kingsmill Golf Academy, recognised by Golf Magazine among its Top 25 golf schools, has a private teaching tee, two short-game areas, four practice greens and an indoor video studio with a launch monitor. After the round, Eagles restaurant in the golf clubhouse serves lunch and dinner for resort guests and members.

Kingsmill sits on ground that was part of the area's plantation life from the 1600s to the 1800s. In 1969 Anheuser-Busch bought 3,900 acres of James River land to build a brewery and, as part of the deal, agreed to develop hundreds of those acres into the resort.

The River Course became a long-running PGA Tour stop, serving as a tour site for 22 years, and it is home to the LPGA's Kingsmill Championship.