Golden Horseshoe: Gold Course
Played Golden Horseshoe in 2008 and all photos were lost in a computer crash and my bad memory clouds a lot of the course description I could do but I wanted to write this up anyway as the course remains at the outer edge of my top 100 and from memory it had some of the best par threes I’ve ever played. So here goes.
The above photo is from Google Street View. This is the Gold course clubhouse and in the distance is the Williamsburg Inn. That’s where we stayed on a retreat and the neat thing about Golden Horseshoe is that the course backs up to the hotel and the town fronts up to (is that a thing?) it. So the whole vibe of the resort is 17th/18th century life including the Inn and believe it or not the golf course – to give you an idea of what this is like imagine the American Experience at Epcot in Disney but instead of faux Mexico next door, you have a golf course. That’s the Gold Course. I almost wanted to wear my pantaloons here.
It’s funny, no one ever refers to Williamsburg as just Williamsburg. It’s Colonial Williamsburg. Or Historic Williamsburg. They don’t refer to it as Corrupt Philadelphia or Dank and Shitty Cleveland, but Williamsburg is always Historic Williamsburg. That’s some good PR there getting everyone to refer to your town with the adjectives you want.
So if you like the re-creation of colonial life, this is a pretty neat town and worth a little daytrip (or quick weekend including a round here). It’s probably not a dude’s golf trip but for couples or groups of couples, this is a pretty cool stop. I’m into the Revolutionary American history thing so if you’re not you may think I’m full of it though.
I actually found the card from here and played pretty well for me (89). As I noted it’s been a while so I can only tell you so much about the course. I remember I could see the first tee and 18th green from my room at the Inn and from the card one is a slight dogleg right. Two is a great short par five but one where your approach has to clear a pond. The pond comes into play on three of four of the par threes. The 16th is the island green that is the signature hole on the course. I don’t remember conditioning or access to the cart girl but I did have this in my top rankings for the longest time so I must have enjoyed the course and Miller Lites and obviously loved the surrounding area in which the course is situated.
If you go, the Williamsburg Inn was a great place to stay. For the authentic Colonial-period meal go to King’s Arms. William & Mary is around the corner and there are a few college-type cool bars just on the outside of the historic area within walking distance of the Inn. Golf-wise, I’ve not played the Green course here nor Kings Mill which is the other resort nearby if you’re planning a few courses. If you’re coming down from Philly or New York through the Delmarva peninsula, Bay Creek has two courses right before you jump on the Chesapeake Bay Bridge and I played the Nicklaus there which was really nice.
If you read any of the other write-ups I’ve done circa 2007-2009 you know I lost the scrapbook pages and photos to a computer crash. So I got a Sabrent USB hard drive recovery enclosure and was able to remove the hard-drive from my tower and access it. Oh happy day, right? Nope. Worked fine and the kit is easy as hell to set up and access but it must’ve been another computer because when I got into all of the files on my old Dell, I had backed everything up on my auxiliary hard drive so the photos and scrapbook pages must’ve been on yet another hard-drive. The hunt continues but if you want to access an old drive on a fried computer, Sabrent worked really well and was easy to use.
Golf Scrapbook 