Golden Horseshoe Golf Club - Gold Course

The Gold Course opened in 1963 within Colonial Williamsburg, commissioned after Rockefeller-backed ownership engaged Robert Trent Jones Sr. to expand an earlier nine-hole layout into a full championship course. Jones routed the holes through rolling, wooded terrain laced with ravines and water, and famously prized the result among his own body of work. Its signature is the par-3 16th, a short one-shotter played entirely across water to an island green, one of the earliest such holes in American design. In 1998, Jones's son Rees Jones returned to sensitively restore and modernize the course, re-leveling tees, rebuilding bunkers and updating turf while preserving his father's strategic intent. The Gold has hosted multiple USGA championships and is routinely ranked among the country's finest public and resort courses.