A friend and his family were staying at Kingsmill and invited me to tag along. A few years ago Kingsmill made some changes and now it requires a stay at the resort to access the courses. One of the courses, The Woods, is now completely private. That leaves the well-known River Course and the lesser-known Plantation Course as the two that the public can play.

I’ll get the bad news out of the way first – that’s the price. I’m not sure the cost of the lodging but the round on the River Course was $165. We did a replay on the Plantation Course for only $30, which helped add some value.

Our morning round was on the River Course, which always gets ranked as one of the top courses in Virginia. The River Course has hosted both PGA and LPGA Tour events. The PGA Tour was last here in 2002, but the LPGA Tour still makes an annual stop in May.

There’s a lot of history not only in the Williamsburg area, but also at Kingsmill! I’m not a history nerd, but the resort is named after Richard Kingsmill, who was a member of the Virginia Company. If you recall, the Virginia Company was charged with settling North America back in the 1600’s.

And, if you are into military history then there is some of that for you too. Part of the golf course runs along the James River and you can see some National Defense Reserve Fleet vessels from the 17th hole, while looking downriver. That collection of mothballed ships is known as the James River Reserve Fleet.

The River Course was designed by Pete Dye and even though I don’t love his work, I found the River Course to be one of his better designs. Compared to the average Dye design, the River Course was missing volcano bunkers and island greens. In fact, the only railroad ties that I could see helped frame the Kingsmill logo on the last hole. However, if you are a fan of Dye’s traditional setup that punishes you from everywhere, then you’ll probably be disappointed with the River Course.

Don’t get the idea that this is an easy resort course though. I played the gold tees which are 73.2/136/6831 and the found the course to be forgiving off the tee. The course is a par-71 with only three par-5’s. There are some wide fairways and the 4th tee shot is the only one that felt tight. However, around the greens is where you could suffer though.

There are elevated greens with deep bunkers, mounds and fall offs so you need to be careful. The green complexes are more in line with what you might find at a traditional Dye course. You may not lose a bunch of golf balls here, but I doubt that you’ll be saving par on a consistent basis after missing the greens.

As you’d expect for a premium price, the River Course was in near perfect condition. That is even more impressive when you consider that ~10 inches of rain fell in May. I don’t know how, but drives hopped down the fairways and the greens were as fast as anything that I’ll putt on this year.

You’ll notice that the greens were still showing the aeration holes from a few weeks ago, but I didn’t have any putts bump off line. The fairways and tees were beautiful too. The rough was nasty as the ball sat down into the bermuda.

There’s no doubt that the River Course is one of the best publicly accessible courses in Williamsburg. Its name gets thrown around as the best, but the Gold Course at nearby Goldenhorse gets my vote as the favorite for that title. Besides the last three holes the River Course is basically an upscale community course.

I’m happy to have had the chance to play here and if you are on vacation with the clubs, then go play as the conditions are going to be great and it is a fair test. Plus, it is always cool to play a course where the pros play!

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):