# The Best Golf Courses in Richmond

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/the-best-golf-courses-in-richmond-va/

[The Course Rankings](/)

Town Rankings / Virginia


A golf course in autumn foliage. Photo: Famartin, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Belmont, a Tillinghast municipal course in Henrico County, was cut to 12 holes. Read that again if you care about where American golf is heading. A county looked at a Golden Age muni it could not sustain in its old form, and instead of selling it or letting it rot, it shortened the course, added a putting course, and brought in a Hanse led team to redo what remained.

Richmond golf contains that story and the opposite story at the same time. The Country Club of Virginia's James River course hosted two U.S. Amateurs. That is establishment golf at the highest amateur level, private, settled, and proud of it. Hermitage sits between those poles as the other established club option in the conversation. So this ranking is really an argument about what a city should value now. We score the golf first, then the day, then access and value, and in Richmond access is not a footnote. It is half the story.

Our order will annoy traditionalists. Good. The traditional order has had a century to make its case.

## 1Belmont Golf Course

Belmont at No. 1 is the spicy pick in this list, so let us make the case plainly instead of hiding behind novelty.

Start with the architect. Tillinghast. A municipal course by one of the greatest architects the American game has produced is rare enough that its survival matters beyond one county. Most Tillinghast work lives behind gates. This one was built for the public, in Henrico County, and the public can still play its descendant.

Then the redo. Cutting a course to 12 holes sounds like surrender until you watch how people actually use golf now. Twelve holes fits an evening. Twelve holes fits a kid, a beginner, a lapsed player who does not have five hours and does not want them. The putting course does similar work for people who may never buy a tee time at all. The Hanse led redo treated Belmont less like a museum to be preserved under glass and more like a working piece of a county, which is what a muni is supposed to be.

The concession is real and we will not soften it. Twelve holes is not eighteen. If your definition of a serious round requires a full card, two nines, and a proper turning point at the halfway house, Belmont in its current form cannot give you that day, and no amount of design pedigree changes the arithmetic. Golfers who want the complete test in Richmond should look down this list.

We still put it first because the question is what course matters most to golf in this city right now. Belmont is the one other cities study. It is the argument that public golf with great bones deserves investment instead of neglect, and that a shorter course played often beats a famous one admired from a distance. Richmond did the brave version. The ranking should say so.

## 2Country Club of Virginia

The James River course at the Country Club of Virginia hosted two U.S. Amateurs. That single fact outranks almost anything else on this page for pure golf credibility, and if this list were scored on championship history alone, CCV would be first and the discussion would be short.

Amateur championships at that level are not handed to pleasant members' courses. A course that hosts the U.S. Amateur has to test the best non professional players in the country across match play, hold up under scrutiny from the USGA, and present a day that feels like an occasion. Twice. That is the evidence for CCV as Richmond's most accomplished private golf, and we are not going to pretend otherwise to protect our No. 1 pick.

The members' reality is the other half of its case. A club of this standing is a home base: regular games, deep local knowledge of every green, generations of Richmond golf played on the same ground. That continuity is what private golf does best anywhere in America, and CCV does it with a championship course as the centerpiece rather than as decoration.

Why second, then? Access, and the present tense. Almost nobody reading this can play CCV without an invitation, and the course's role in the city's wider golf life is therefore narrow, however distinguished. The concession runs both ways here. If you hold a membership, or the invitation is already in hand, this is your No. 1 and our ranking is academic. For the city as a whole, a course most golfers can only read about cannot sit above the muni that is actively changing what public golfers expect.

Play it if you ever get the call. It is, by championship record, the most proven test in town.

## 3Hermitage Country Club

Hermitage takes third as the established private alternative, and third in this company is not an insult. Richmond is a city with one nationally significant public experiment and one private course with two U.S. Amateurs on its record. The third best golf address in that town still has a real life.

What Hermitage offers is club golf in Richmond without the championship spotlight that follows CCV. For a member, that can be a feature. Less ceremony, a regular game, a course known intimately over years. Rankings undervalue that kind of golf because it produces no headlines.

The concession is that Hermitage wins neither argument that decides this list. It is not the public story, and it is not the championship story. In a three course town conversation dominated by a radical muni redo and a two time U.S. Amateur host, third is where the solid private option lands, with its members very likely unbothered by our verdict.

Richmond's golf ends up telling one clean truth. The most interesting thing happening in the city's game right now is happening on 12 holes at a county course, and the private giants are the ones chasing its relevance.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.