The top golf resorts in the country have been hit particularly hard by the coronavirus pandemic. With revenues tied to accommodations and food services as well as to their golf courses, even the resorts that have been able to keep their courses operational have sustained more than a month of lost bookings throughout the properties.
Most states have reopened their golf courses – only Vermont, Maryland and Massachusetts have remained closed to golf with no announced plans to reopen. And now that many states are trying to restart businesses, several top resorts have announced reopening dates of at least some non-golf operations as they plan a return to normalcy.
As examples of how resorts around the country are trying to get things started as governors allow businesses to open, we offer the following look at Golfweek’s Best top resort courses and proposed timelines for the full resort operations to open. Each resort has stressed its efforts to provide sanitary playing opportunities with social distancing and other modifications such as leaving the flags in the hole while putting and using modified cups to prevent players from having to reach too deeply into the holes.
No. 1 Pebble Beach Golf Links
The famed course in Pebble Beach, California – host to six U.S. Opens – reopened Monday. Hotel operations are slated to begin June 1. Spyglass Hill at the resort, No. 11 on the Golfweek’s Best list, also reopened Monday. Tee times are typically reserved for resort guests with only limited non-resort public access, but during May the golf courses will be open for public-access bookings with reduced green fees: $495 for Pebble Beach, down from the normal $575, and $325 for Spyglass Hill, down from the normal $415.