Warm-Weather Winter Escapes
Tee it up while the rest of the range is frozen.
When the home course goes dormant, these destinations are just hitting their stride—firm turf, blue skies, and shorts in January. Built for the golfer who refuses to rack the clubs until April.
Barrier-island resort golf on Florida's First Coast—Pete Dye's marsh-woven Oak Marsh and Tom Fazio's oceanfront Long Point, plus a ten-hole par-3, wrapped in beaches and moss-draped oaks.
Cabot's Florida outpost—rolling sand ridges an hour north of Tampa, with two full courses and two short courses built for winter escapes.
Point Hardy Golf Club—Coore & Crenshaw's cliff-top stunner on Saint Lucia's northern tip, where half the holes touch the Atlantic.
Two Gil Hanse–rebuilt courses at a Spanish-Colonial resort in Carlsbad—the NCAA championship North Course, long the Tournament of Champions venue, and its gentler South companion, twenty minutes from the North County San Diego beaches.
"Each course is a masterpiece. Imagine playing through some of Jekyll Island’s most pristine lakes, marshes and forests. There are very few man-made obstructions here. But you will have to navigate the island’s alligators, osprey and deer."
Gold Mountain's Olympic Course—Washington's best muni, carved through Puget Sound firs a ferry ride from Seattle.
Jack Nicklaus's Grand Bear, carved through the pines of the De Soto National Forest—big-name golf at casino-trip prices.
Two contrasting desert courses below the Santa Catalinas: Von Hagge & Devlin's old PGA Tour parkland and Tom Lehman's target-golf Sonoran—off an Omni resort in Tucson's winter-golf sweet spot.
Five Pete Dye, Nicklaus and Norman championship courses across La Quinta Resort and PGA West—desert target golf under the Santa Rosa mountains, anchored by a historic 1926 hacienda resort.
Caledonia and True Blue—Mike Strantz's lowcountry pair across the road from each other at the quiet end of the Grand Strand.
Torrey Pines—36 municipal holes on the bluffs above the Pacific, with US Open pedigree and hang gliders overhead.
Two public links on Washington's South Sound: Chambers Bay's U.S. Open venue and The Home Course, the state's literal home of golf—a half-hour apart, both walkable, both a fraction of resort prices.
Modern golf's boldest trio—soon five—rising out of old phosphate-mine dunes an hour and a half from Tampa.
The builder can chain multiple stops into a single road-trip itinerary.
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