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Cooling temperatures. Changing leaves. A lull in the televised golf schedule.
Things tend to line up beautifully for fall golf trips. For many golfers, a few days' excursion in late September, October or early November is a last-hurrah of sorts, a celebration of yet another golf season winding down. It's a chance to squeeze a few more memorable rounds into the calendar year before courses aerify their greens and crisp cool mornings eventually turn unbearably chilly.
Growing up in New England, I happen to prefer autumn golf to springtime golf. The spring is often too much of a mixed bag in terms of weather; more often than not, courses are wetter than we would prefer. Catch a dry-ish autumn spell and you will most likely get to enjoy the best conditions certain courses will experience all year, as if the agronomy staff is emptying their bag of tricks before the course gets a much-deserved winter rest.
This list represents a mix of destinations that see their courses shut down most winters and others where the golf season extends towards Thanksgiving and beyond. You can always count on marquee destinations like Pinehurst and big-time resorts like Bandon Dunes and Sand Valley for a great fall golf trip - if you can secure tee times and accommodations - but here are 10 other ideas that largely revolve around courses enjoying recent renovation work as the hook for your next potential golf journey.
10 best fall golf trips in America for 2026
Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
There's really never a bad time to go play some golf along the Grand Strand, but over years of visiting and living there, I have come to prefer the fall to the spring season there. Another advantage to targeting a fall trip there: you can check out the latest renovations and, in the case of 2026, a brand-new 9-hole par 3 course being built on the grounds of Legends Golf Resort called The Piper. The Avocet course at Wild Wing is being touched up by original architect Jeff Brauer, too, and King's North at Myrtle Beach National is maturing after a two-year renovation project by architect Brandon Johnson.
Leaf-peeping from the Berkshires to the Catskills
Fall road trip, anyone? When the foliage is showing off, the Berkshires in Massachusetts and the Catskills in New York have plenty of pleasant scenery to offer, as well as sneaky-good golf. On the Massachusetts side, you've got Taconic Golf Club, one of the country's greatest college courses, as well as favorites like Crumpin-Fox Club and the newly-renovated Wyndhurst, which wraps around a Gilded Age mansion in the charming town of Lenox. Head west into New York and you've got the new-look Monster Golf Club at Resorts World Catskills, a brawny but enjoyable Rees Jones rebuild of one of the region's formerly-famous courses. The old-school emerging cult-favorite Sullivan County 9-holer is nearby, too, for stark contrast's sake, as are standby munis like Lochmor and Tarry Brae. Word has it that golf may be returning to the old Grossinger's property in the coming years, too.
El Dorado, Arkansas
There aren't many one-course golf destinations out there, but that's how highly I think of the whole deal surrounding Mystic Creek Golf Club about two hours south of Little Rock and about an hour and 45 minutes north of Shreveport, Louisiana. The Ken Dye design is big-shouldered, beautiful and well worth playing multiple times, and the town of El Dorado punches above its population size for restaurant quality and activities on offer. The Haywood Hotel is a well-priced Hilton Tapestry property in the middle of it all. October highs in this part of the world average in the 70s, with pleasant nightly cool-downs.
Georgia's Golden Isles
Georgia doesn't have quite as much coastline as its neighbors to the north (South Carolina) and south (Florida), but it does have plenty of quality, with multiple courses receiving some recent upgrades. Sea Island remains one of America's best golf resorts, and October 2026 will see its Seaside course reopen after a months-long renovation project by Davis Love III's Love Golf Design group. Very little of the design is changing, but Love & co. have laid down new turf, refreshed bunkers and otherwise prepped the course to host the PGA Tour's RSM Classic for the 17th straight year this November. Nearby, Jekyll Island's Great Dunes golf course is maturing after a full rebuild/redesign by architects Jeffrey Stein and Brian Ross. Also coming in November of 2026 is the reopening of the golf course at King & Prince on the northern tip of St. Simons Island, after a full-on renovation project by architect Beau Welling. The club will be private upon reopening; it is yet to be determined whether but guests of the on-site King & Prince Beach Resort will still be able to arrange to play the course.
Kansas City
Golf's modern-day Munaissance is rolling steadily along, with historic Swope Memorial Golf Course reopening after an 18-month, $8 million renovation aimed at recapturing the look, feel and main design elements of Golden Age architect A.W. Tillinghast's work there in the 1930s. The project was led by Todd Clark of CE Golf Design. Clark, a resident of Kansas City, collaborated with design partner Brad Hugo, former Golf Digest architecture editor Ron Whitten and course superintendent Josh Linn to usher in Swope's new era. For visiting golfers, the area is also home to a solid nucleus of well-reviewed public golf that includes Shoal Creek Golf Course, Creekmoor Golf Club and Dub's Dread Golf Club.
Seattle/Tacoma
Bandon gets more buzz and traffic among Pacific Northwest golf these days, but it's so tough to get a tee time that traveling golfers often need to look elsewhere. One option: the area around Washington's largest metro area, already home to the likes of Chambers Bay and the state golf association's Home Course, plus resorts like Salish Cliffs and Suncadia. A new idea is the renamed Cedar Irons (née North Shore) Golf Club, owned by the Puyallup Tribe of Indians and located 17 miles south of the Sea-Tac Airport. Cedar Irons is fresh off of a $7.5 million renovation by experienced regional architect Dan Hixson.
Central Virginia
Tributer, an ambitious resort and community on the northwestern shore of Lake Anna about an hour north of Richmond, recently opened a group of two-bedroom Cottages and four-bedroom Villas, becoming America's newest stay-and-play golf resort in the process. The golf on property: the quirky and fun Cutalong Golf Course, where architect Tom Clark mixed and matched features drawn from the annals of golf design history to both educate golfers and keep them slightly off-balance as they wend their way across the layout. About half an hour away, Meadows Farms Golf Club, home of America's longest single golf hole, an 841-yard par 6, is recovering strongly from some rough conditions that crept in last year. Recent reviews of this family-owned course report improving conditions.
Asheville, North Carolina
In 2024, Hurricane Helene wrought havoc across a swath of the interior South, including Asheville. This affected several area golf courses, which have spent the last two years tackling recovery efforts of varying extents. At Broadmoor Golf Links, architects Justin Carlton and Lee Marshall took the opportunity to rebuild and redesign greens, bunkers and other infrastructure. "What a great comeback story," reads the course's most recent review. Broadmoor can now be added to the likes of the Omni Grove Park Inn, Sequoyah National, Waynesville Inn and Balsam Mountain Preserve - the latter two properties being places where on-site guests have historically been able to access the course. Former Golf Channel personality Charlie Rymer recently began promoting Springdale Resort, about 40 minutes southwest of town.
Dallas-Fort Worth
Once the summer heat mellows out, the Dallas area becomes an easy-to-reach and option-heavy golf destination. Football fans, especially of "America's Team," can begin making their latest pilgrimages to Cowboys Golf Club, which reopened this past spring after a significant renovation project overseen by Beau Welling. In addition to new greens and bunkering, the club brought in 60 yards of game-used field turf from AT&T Stadium and placed it in the driving range, complete with yellow uprights. Whether it's easier to get a golf ball or a football through them is up to you.
Maryland's Eastern Shore
Ocean City has its up-tempo vibe (and was featured in our latest roundup of ideal summer golf trips), but the western side of this part of the state has a quieter charm with steadily improving golf options. In quaint St. Michaels, the Links at Perry Cabin is closing in on the tenth anniversary of the overhaul of its Pete Dye-designed golf course. Farther north and closer to Annapolis, Queenstown Harbour continues to evolve as a 36-hole facility of note, while River Marsh Golf Club at the Hyatt resort in Cambridge underwent some updates ov its own in the summer of 2024, converting its fairways to Iron Cutter Bermuda grass.
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