Much like stretches of idyllic coastline, the mountains represent an ideal landscape for golf, one that can deliver striking vistas and dramatically routed holes. But venturing into the hills usually comes with a price. Characteristically, mountain golf courses place a heavy premium on accuracy—to the point that marginal shots are often made worse by unfriendly bounces.
More often than not, golfers who play a mountain course must prepare for that challenge and be ready to accept whatever unlucky bounces they may get. Every now and then, however, mountain-goers may find a course that’s designed to deliver the thrill of alpine golf without the same degree of penalty.
Here, we spotlight 10 of those player-friendly routings—five public courses and five layouts at private clubs.
PUBLIC
The Alpine at Boyne Mountain—Boyne Falls, Mich.
A visit to Boyne Mountain resort with rounds played on both The Alpine and The Monument courses will offer guests a “good cop, bad cop” experience—in that order. Both courses introduce bold downhill holes to start, and both routings trundle down the mountain. Yet, The Monument plays as most mountain courses do, which is to say golfers are likely to feel squeezed on several tee shots and will find that most marginal shots are penalized by unfavorable bounces.
Such is not the case on The Alpine, a Bill Newcomb design that stretches beyond 7,000 yards but offers mostly wide corridors for golfers to swing away with confidence. That’s not to say that you can’t find yourself in trouble should you miss the fairway, but the key point is that you’re likely to find your ball, which means you’ll at least have the opportunity to recover. Elsewhere along the course, shortly mowed areas have been implemented around many of the green complexes, which provide players with more options to get up and down.
The Keep at McLemore—Rising Fawn, Ga.
McLemore’s tagline says it all: Golf above the clouds. The property’s original course, The Highlands, stole a lot of the spotlight when it opened in 2019, as the 7,055-yard, par-71 routing (a Rees Jones and Bill Bergin redesign) meanders its way along a bluff and, in the process, brings golfers right alongside sheer cliffs. Set atop a 2,300-foot mountain, the resort’s premiere routing is a dramatic but stout test.
McLemore’s newest course, The Keep, is a far more forgiving layout that is no less dramatic. In fact, as co-designer Bergin explains, those sweeping vistas were one of the factors that led to the course’s extra wide fairways. Moreover, many aspects of the course—its fairways, bunkers, and greens—are all large, and their size is intentional: They were conceived so that they can match the scale of the views. Of course, they were also designed in such a manner as to accommodate the site’s breezes, which occasionally blow hard. That said, golfers who tee it up here on calmer days will find the course quite accommodating.
The Old Course at The Omni Homestead Resort & Spa—Hot Springs, Va.
Originally opened as a six-hole course in 1892 and later expanded to 18 by Donald Ross in 1913, The Old Course at The Omni Homestead Resort & Spa has since been renovated over the years by William Flynn and Rees Jones. The course is famous for its opening tee—the oldest first tee in continuous use in the United States—though it’s equally well known for playing host to President William McKinley, the first sitting president to play the game.
Speaking of that first tee, golfers will quickly learn of The Old Course’s mountain-like qualities as they stare up the notably inclined opening par five; however, those players will also discover that many of the holes during the middle of their round offer generous bailout areas and run parallel with other holes. The course’s routing also features six par threes, six par fours, and six par fives, with three of those par fives measuring less than 500 yards from the tips.
Omni Mount Washington Resort & Spa—Bretton Woods, N.H.
If you’ve not played the Mount Washington Golf Course before, you could easily assume it’s a brute. After all, the course is set in the shadows of New Hampshire’s Presidential Mountain Range—more specifically, its namesake mountain, the tallest peak in the northeast, where the fastest wind speed ever recorded by man (231 mph) was measured at the summit.
In reality, the Donald Ross design is far more welcoming than the weather that batters the mountain peak. For starters, there’s not nearly as much elevation change as you would expect given the course’s name. Back in 2008, Brian Silva also painstakingly restored the course to Ross’s original specifications, using the late architect’s original plans. This means golfers should expect to encounter plateau greens surrounded by run-off areas; numerous back-to-front sloped putting surfaces and false-fronted greens; bunkers canted to face the direction of play; and some traps that, from a distance, look as though they’re tightly guarding putting surfaces (in reality, these bunkers are position 30 or 40 yards from the green).
Overall, the course is defined by numerous architectural features that we now associate with early 20th century design. The back nine, for example, features an uphill par four with two semi-blind shots, while a subsequent downhill par three offers a kicker slope to assist golfers who want to utilize the ground’s contours to funnel shots onto the green. It’s certainly not a pushover—no authentic Donald Ross course is—but the challenges that face golfers during a round on the Mount Washington Golf Course are the type you should expect on an expertly crafted course anywhere.
The Ranch Golf Club—Southwick, Mass.
The mountain course vibes at The Ranch Golf Club in southwestern Massachusetts are surprising given that the truly mountainous land of western Massachusetts is more than 30 miles away. That said, this Damian Pascuzzo-designed course, set in the subtle foothills of the Berkshire Mountains, is expertly routed so that much of the climbing is done in a golf cart between holes. Moreover, the payoff for making those climbs is the opportunity to play a pair of par fives that play drastically downhill—the first of which, hole 9, can put a short iron in golfers’ hands for their second shots to the green, provided they first hit strong drives that land in the fairway.
PRIVATE
Balsam Mountain Preserve—Sylva, N.C.
Arnold Palmer first visited the site of what is now Balsam Mountain Preserve more than 20 years ago. Immediately, he saw its potential. Allegedly, others on the site’s development team weren’t as confident; but the lead project manager, Harrison Minchew, had years of experience building golf courses in Japan, where elevation grades were sometimes steeper than what he and the course’s designers faced in the Great Smoky Mountains. “Here, in the U.S., it’s a less-is-more approach,” Minchew says of land manipulation for golf course development. “But when you get in the mountains, you cannot be that way. You’ve got to clear it wide enough, you have to make sure you have plenty of space to flatten it out and make good golf holes, and as you route it, you have to grade it in your mind.”
Rising as high as 3,840 feet above sea level, the 6,824-yard course delivers all of the dramatic vistas that you would expect of a course built high in the Smokies. However, unlike so many mountain courses which are defined by tee shots infused with looming peril, Balsam Mountain offers ample width to make the vast majority of its holes playable for the average amateur.
Castle Pines Golf Club—Castle Rock, Colo.
Jack Nicklaus’s signature design just south of Denver is aptly suited for the occasional rope-a-dope. It’s not uncommon for first-time visitors to stand on the opening tee box and entertain the idea of shooting a personal best score—or at least going low. However, by the end of those rounds, golfers who confidently teed it up usually find themselves writing down a number on their scorecards that’s at least a few strokes higher than they expected. The reasons for that have nothing to do with the course being unforgiving or overly penal in the way that so many mountain courses are. Instead, tall, thick rough and difficult green complexes are the most common culprits for bogeys or worse. Nevertheless, the course is both visually stunning and friendly, in that the challenges come in forms you expect, not unpredictable bounces or extremely tight corridors.
Ekwanok Country Club—Manchester, Vt.
There are plenty of golf courses in Vermont that are characterized by tree-lined playing corridors that climb up and tumble down severely sloped terrain. Ekwanok Country Club, set at the base of Mt. Equinox, bucks that trend. Originally constructed by Walter Travis and John Duncan Dunn in 1899, the course has been modified over the years; however, some defining features have been preserved. Most notably, the 7th hole remains one of the greatest tests of golf. At 595 yards, the par five plays uphill, requiring a long, blind second shot. Some consider it to be the most famous hole in Vermont, largely due to the fact that even the biggest of hitters cannot reach the green in two. While the 7th may be imposing, the majority of the course, nestled in a valley that’s surrounded by the Taconic Mountain Range, is not. The fairways are generous in their width and are framed by fescue grasses, so pulling driver on most tee boxes isn’t an unsettling proposition. Instead, it’s the aggressively contoured putting surfaces that defend against low scores.
Gozzer Ranch Golf & Lake Club—Harrison, Idaho
When Tom Fazio routed the 7,317 yards of this private golfing gem on a point overlooking Coeur d’Alene Lake in northwest Idaho almost 20 years ago, he did so understanding that he had to protect against possible erosion. The end result is a course that covers an expansive parcel of land, delivering catch-your-breath changes in elevation and spectacular views of distant mountains and the aforementioned lake. Additionally, Fazio created shaggy-lipped bunkers and incorporated several black rock outcroppings, both of which inject an attractive rugged quality to the course. All in all, the course introduces the types of shots you would expect to face on an alpine gem; it just doesn’t play like one.
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The Reserve at Moonlight Basin—Big Sky, Mont.
The poster child for mountain golf, The Reserve at Moonlight Basin was literally built on the site of an old ski resort. That means—as you might expect—that the Jack Nicklaus design offers 360-degree vistas of the surrounding Rockies. In a unique twist, many holes feature multiple fairways, which enhances the strategic nature of a round and also introduces several opportunities for hero shots. Those various target areas off the tee also ensure that the playing corridors are sufficiently wide, and there’s plenty of friendly contouring to be found across the almost 8,000 yards. Yes, the course is exceptionally long on paper, but when they factor in its elevation (7,500 feet above sea level), golfers will discover that it plays much shorter. Just take the par-four first hole, which plays at least 200 feet downhill. “You can almost count to 10 before your ball hits the ground,” Greg Wagner, the director of golf, says of players’ drives on that introductory hole.
What other player-friendly mountain golf courses would you add to this list?
