Why Kingsmill's Courses Are Anything but Vanilla

Morning Read's Gary Van Sickle likens Kingsmill Resort and Spa's three courses to ice cream, which is not lacking in flavor.

WILLIAMSBURG, Va. — The late Anheuser-Busch Classic was once a popular PGA Tour stop at the Kingsmill Resort and Spa and the one thing I most remember about it — other than sweltering summer heat and humidity that could melt a brick — is Curtis’ Strange Navy.

No, that’s not a real naval fleet. It was a clever nickname, an ode to Virginia’s favorite golfing son and two-time U.S. Open champion, scrawled on signs attached to party boats anchored on the James River just offshore the River Course during tournament week. The CBS cameras loved to zoom in on the boats during the telecast, especially if a few bikini-clad occupants were in view.

Those were the days. The PGA Tour left Kingsmill after 2002, then the LPGA arrived and hosted a tournament with an assortment of sponsors that evolved into the Pure Silk Championship. Taiwan’s Wei-ling Hsu won the final edition of that event last May.

That makes 2022 the rare occasion over the last 40 years with no professional tour event played at Kingsmill, which first hosted the Anheuser-Busch Classic in 1981. The event began as the Kaiser International Open in 1968 (won by Kermit Zarley) in Napa, Calif., switched sponsors to Anheuser-Busch in 1977 and then moved to Kingsmill in ’81. Its winners over the following decades included Jack Nicklaus, Johnny Miller, Tom Watson, David Duval and, why not, Notah Begay III.

While the LPGA checked out of Kingsmill last year, I checked in, something I should’ve done sooner, I discovered. Excluding golf, it's an excellent resort that boasts a spa, too many tennis courts to count, water sports of all sorts, famed amusement park Busch Gardens next door and nearby Colonial Williamsburg, for starters.

I came for the golf, though, and Kingsmill has three courses created by three designers — Arnold Palmer, Pete Dye and the team of Strange and Tom Clark. The courses are great fun and as distinctively different as three flavors of ice cream. Which one is the best? That’s your call but you can’t go wrong. A universal law guarantees that all ice cream is good.

The Arnold Palmer design is a good course to play before tackling Kingsmill's other two / Kingsmill Resort

Vanilla Fudge Swirl

The Plantation Course, a Palmer design, was the perfect track to start my Kingsmill odyssey. I’d just gotten out of the car after a seven-hour drive from Pittsburgh and was feeling none too frisky on a bright, chilly fall day and The Plantation Course is the shortest and easiest of Kingsmill’s courses (6,437 yards from the tips).

I skipped the practice range and went right to the tee for a late afternoon solo round and then learned two things on the first hole. Maybe warming up is for sissies but … I should’ve warmed up. Second, the Plantation’s bunker sand was excellent. I tried it out twice.

The course was straightforward, forgiving and a little vanilla until I reached a stretch of memorable holes in the middle of the round that ought to have a nickname, like The Witch’s Cauldron or Arnie’s Gauntlet or The Five Fingers of Death or something.

The 8th is a 501-yard par 5 whose tree-lined fairway slithers back and forth and ends in an equally serpentine green. I liked it even though my tee shot slithered the wrong way.

The 9th looked like a breather, a 117-yard par 3 with an angled green, but it wasn’t. I misjudged the wind (or my ability, you make the call) and left myself with a monstrously long putt from the green’s front to the back pin location. It was dumb luck to get down in two putts from there. A very cool short hole.

At 421 yards, the 10th challenged my senior skill set. A pond lurked on the hole’s right side so only a brave golfer risked challenging the water with an approach shot. Brave? I bailed out left.

The 11th was the Plantation’s strongest hole, according to me. It was 434 yards with trees on both sides and trouble over the green that you can’t see. I lashed a 4-wood shot from the fairway — my best swing of the day — and it landed near the pin, then it bounded over the green and down a hillside into weeds and underbrush. 

I exceeded the USGA’s three-minute search limit but since I was playing alone and the course was empty, nobody bitched when I found my ball in a hit-and-hope lie after six or eight minutes. I got it on the green from there, no small feat, and then laughed out loud when my 30-foot putt went over a mound and into the cup for an unlikely par. OK, a cheating par. So sue me.

I could’ve used a caddie and/or a mulligan at the 12th, a short-ish par 5 at 460 yards that came with a catch. A ravine bisected the fairway exactly where my second shot decided to go. Did I hit the wrong club or take the wrong line? Yes. Did I make par? No. Did I at least make bogey? Use your imagination. All right, no. Satisfied?

The Plantation’s best hole was the par-3 17th, 177 yards. It crosses a marshy area and rises up a substantial hill guarded up by two gnarly, gaping bunkers. It is hard to see anything but those intimidating bunkers and that’s not a good feeling. Imagine seeing a grizzly bear 50 yards away and it turns, looks at you and probably mistakes you for a large taco. That’s the feeling.

My only goal was to make sure I cleared the first bunker. My next goal, after hitting it into the first bunker, was to at least clear the second bunker. Mission accomplished, just barely, and the ball took an unexpected bounce forward onto the fringe. That led to a 20-foot putt traveling at high speed that clanked off the pin and dropped for par. It’s funny how holing two long putts makes you forget all the bad shots and feel good about barely surviving the Finger-licking-good Death Cauldron, or whatever we decided to call that mid-round stretch.

Despite the encroachment of residential homes, the par-4 16th still offers a beautiful view of the James River.  / Kingsmill Resort

Cookies ‘n Cream

The late designer Pete Dye doesn’t do vanilla, only fancy flavors. So the next day, when we took on the River Course, site of the old ABC (Anheuser-Busch Classic), we knew we were in for a challenge. By we, I mean myself and my son, Mike, a professional who has played some Korn Ferry Tour golf. He drove in from Pittsburgh the previous night.

The 3rd hole already had me tipping my hat to Dye. It was a shortish par 5 — 518 yards from the tips for Mike, a mere 481 for me from the blues — with a severely sloping right-to-left fairway. The hole plays uphill from the second shot. The hole doesn’t just look good, it’s clever. The sloped fairway made it difficult to hit a good second shot (or third) from a sidehill lie. I live in Pittsburgh, where it’s so hilly that nobody has a nice level driving range, not even Oakmont, so I should’ve been used to it. Tell that to my subsequent 7.

The best-looking hole on the front was the unique par-3 5th, 173 yards. A stream cut in front of the green, then curled around its right side. Between it and the green, Dye placed a bunker that curled on a similar path. It’s like double jeopardy only without Alex Trebec.

As we pulled up near the green in our cart after hitting our tee shots, the group of ladies playing ahead of us doubled back and walked down toward the water hazard, calling out, “Vicki? Vicki?”

Three members of the group had visited the ladies’ restroom on the hillside behind the green but when they came out, there was no Vicki, who was last seen ball-hawking by the stream. After a few minutes of confusion, it turned out Vicki had walked ahead to the next tee. 

“We thought she fell in and might be dead,” the relieved ladies told us. They graciously invited us to play through but we told them to play on, their pace was fine. Plus, we didn’t want to miss this show’s next act.

The River Course glamor spot has always been its finishing stretch.

The 16th is a long par 4 that bends right and drops down a hill toward the James River. It used to be a truly scenic hole with the James River in the background. New-ish large homes lining the fairway’s left side eliminated that view, however, and a slew of McMansions right of the fairway were actively under construction, too. The 16th is still a good hole but Mona Lisa has left the building.

Did I say No. 5 was the best-looking hole here? My bad. You can't beat the panorama of the par-3 17th along the banks of the James River. To reach the tee from the 16th green, you walk (or drive your cart) past an old cannon monument. It is Civil War vintage but the same spot was used as a strategic battery against the British during the Revolutionary War, too.

I fired The Shot Heard ‘Round The Tee on this 177-yarder that came up short of the green. I also came up short with my chip shot and my first putt. Send General George Washington my apologies. Mike counter-attacked with a nice iron shot that landed past the pin, took the slope and began rolling toward the cup. It stopped a few inches from being an ace and he settled for birdie. I think General Charles Cornwallis’ surrender came shortly thereafter.

The 18th is a dirty-dog dogleg that turns inland. It is 450 yards with fairway bunkers and a hidden pond on the left. The pro bombed it over the bunkers guarding the left corner and had an easy wedge in. I also had an easy wedge in — for my third shot. My drive was too ambitious, which sounds better than saying I yanked it left, didn’t even reach the bunkers and bounded down the slope to the bottom, inches from the pond I didn’t know was there. I like this hole, I just don’t like the guy who hit my drive there.

The green sits below the clubhouse and provides a nice setting for tournament galleries. Two major professional tours have taste-tested the River Course and found it delicious. If you play only one Kingsmill Resort course, make it this one.

The Woods Course was designed by Virginia native son Curtis Strange and Tom Clark / Kingsmill Resort

Butter Pecan

The Woods Course has been a members-only club since 2014 but the resort’s marketing folks told me it will be open for limited resort-guest play in 2022. If so, play it… if you can find it.

I rolled up to the usual Kingsmill Resort bag drop, unloaded my clubs from the car and confidently told the bag drop guy I was playing the Woods Course. He gave me a funny look because, “That course is about four miles up the road from here,” he said.

Oh. So my first drive was already really errant. On the plus side, it was really long. (Four miles long.)

The Woods Course has its own modest but very sunny clubhouse. It reminds me of butter pecan ice cream because while that flavor isn’t for everyone, those who like it really love it.

For starters, the conditions were the best of the three courses, maybe because as a private club it got less play than the resort tracks. The greens were smoother and quicker, the tees nicer and the bunker sand, once again thoroughly tested by me, was tour quality. The course is a nice mix of open and wooded holes and water comes into play on a number of holes, making them memorable.

I played solo again, almost literally. There was only one other twosome on the course on a morning when the temperature struggled to climb out of the 40s and the wind gusted around 25 mph. In Pittsburgh, we call that T-shirt weather, but here it was Man versus The Elements. (Betting tip: Take The Elements.)

The 2nd hole was a medium-length par 4 into the gale, 387 yards. And yes, I’d already made an executive decision to move up from the back tees. This green was almost an isthmus guarded by a lake. I had 145 yards but due to the wind and cold, I hit three more clubs than normal and absolutely flushed a 5-iron shot that made the green with, oh, two feet to spare. Whew.

I particularly liked the par-5 9th, which was guarded by a large pond and a bunker on its left side. My third shot disappeared into the pond, swatted down by the wind like Dikembe Mutombo playing center on a summer-league team for sixth graders.

The par-3 12th hole, 184 yards, had signature-hole potential on first sight. It features a carry over a pond to a wide green with a bunker on its left side. At the green, I discovered it was part of a double green. American courses typically suffer epic fails when trying to replicate this feature famously found at St. Andrews’ Old Course in Scotland. But Clark and Strange pulled it off here. The 12th's partner green, the 15th, is elevated a bit, which works as a clever divider. The 15th green’s putting surface basically spills down from the upper slope around the 12th's bunker, a nice look. The only drawback: It’s hard to photograph well.

Another striking hole was the 16th, a par 5 that sweeps left toward a ravine below, where a lone sentinel guards the corner, and then back uphill to the green, guarded by several bunkers. It’s an optical illusion that makes the distance appear shorter than it really is. I actually tried to get home in two, or at least get near the green, but I badly missed a fairway shot and sent a screaming grounder down the fairway. That turned into a perfect layup and I made an easy par because of that mistake. Had I hit that shot well, I probably would’ve ended up playing pinball in those greenside bunkers. It’s one of those great holes you need to play once — or more than once — to feel comfortable on.

The 18th hole looked familiar. It is the ninth hole’s evil twin. It’s a par 4 on the other side of the pond and bunker that it shares with No. 9, as both finish below the clubhouse windows. Into the wind, I had a long second shot and probably should have played it safe but, as the tourists say in Scotland, I didn’t come 3,000 miles to lay up. I dunked my second shot into the pond. I blame the wind although a crappy swing may have been a factor, I can’t say for sure until I speak with an attorney.

Irked, I then Tin-Cupped it, dropped another ball from the same spot and hooked this one up on a ridge at the edge of the treeline left. From up there, I hit a smart pitch onto the green and holed a putt for — ahh, who’s even counting anymore?

The Woods Course has a strong personality and a flavor I liked. Now that I’ve gained some crucial course knowledge, I’d like another try at it. In fact, I’d like another try at all three flavors of Kingsmill Resort’s golf.

Why not? I like ice cream.