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A girls\u2019 golf trip is about more than the scorecard.<\/p>\n
Image Credit: Golfbreaks<\/p>\n
The traditional golf trip has never been particularly complicated. Play as much golf as possible, eat, sleep and do it again the next morning. But as more women take up the game, the itinerary is getting a lot more interesting.<\/p>\n
Golfbreaks saw that clearly when it surveyed 2,500 golfers in early 2026. Among women, 44 percent said their ideal golf trip meant playing with friends and another 28 percent chose family. Fewer than 3 percent picked a competition or organized event. Hotel quality mattered more to women, too, with 67 percent ranking it among their top three considerations when booking.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuxury accommodation, wellness, outstanding dining, a strong sense of community, and opportunities to spend quality time with friends in a safe environment are becoming just as important as the golf itself,\u201d says Megan Graham, Tournaments Manager at Golfbreaks<\/a>. Women are spending accordingly, with the company\u2019s internal sales data showing female customers spend \u00a3105 more per passenger than men and book 7.3 percent more mid- and long-haul trips.<\/p>\n The itinerary has room for a vineyard in Portugal, a private spa hale in Hawai\u2018i, sea swimming in Scotland or even a llama carrying the clubs through New Hampshire.<\/p>\n View of Cabot Cliffs from Broad Cove. Image Credit: Shutterstock\/Steve Rankin<\/p>\n Where to Start<\/p>\n Cabot has also been putting more weight behind the women\u2019s game. Its first professional sports partnership is with LPGA champion Brooke Henderson, and Women\u2019s Golf Day programming has expanded across its properties. Women\u2019s rental clubs are now available at every Cabot destination, and women make up half of the company\u2019s executive team, with representation across golf operations, instruction, turf and caddie programs.<\/p>\n Having the country\u2019s two top-ranked courses within the same resort is reason enough to pack the clubs<\/a>. A round can be followed by a hike along the coast or a seafood dinner with the Gulf of St. Lawrence rarely far from view. It\u2019s the sort of place where golf commands the day without swallowing the vacation.<\/p>\n But not everyone arriving on a golf trip has the same experience with the game. Golfbreaks noted alternative formats, such as nine-hole rounds and simulator golf, make the game less intimidating for beginners and shift the focus toward having fun rather than keeping score.<\/p>\n Frisco<\/a>, Texas, takes that flexibility even further. Home to the PGA of America, the city makes it remarkably easy to decide how much golf you want. Serious players can tackle the championship courses at Fields Ranch, beginners can head for the 10-hole Swing short course, and everyone can meet on the two-acre Dance Floor putting course. The PGA of America Coaching Center runs women-focused lessons and small-group clinics for beginners still figuring out which club to pull from their bags and experienced players looking to shave a few strokes off their scorecards.<\/p>\n There are also considerably more luxurious ways to work on a swing. At adults-only Sensei L\u0101na\u02bbi, A Four Seasons Resort<\/a>, the Golf Optimal Wellbeing Program combines time on the Jack Nicklaus-designed Manele Golf Course with seven hours of personalized instruction and assessments. Then it is back to the resort, where the recovery plan might involve aquatic bodywork, thermal body mapping or disappearing into one of 10 private spa hales with its own soaking tub, infrared sauna, steam room and garden.<\/p>\n It is golf camp, perhaps, but not the version most of us remember.<\/p>\n Coeur d\u2019Alene Resort<\/a> in Idaho comes closer to summer camp, albeit with considerably better accommodations. The resort sits on the edge of Lake Coeur d\u2019Alene, and the golf course\u2019s famous floating green is a movable island reachable by boat after the tee shot.<\/p>\n Golf is more fun when your caddie is a llama. Image Credit: Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa<\/p>\n There Is More Than One Way to Play<\/p>\n Golfbreaks found that 63 percent of female golfers preferred a few quiet drinks after a round, compared with just 3 percent who wanted late nights and partying.<\/p>\n Sea Island<\/a>, along Georgia\u2019s Atlantic coast, has gone a step further by building trips specifically for women. Its Women\u2019s Golf Getaways combine three championship courses and the resort\u2019s 17,000-square-foot Golf Performance Center with 14 hours of instruction covering everything from putting and green reading to driver strategy and bunker play. There is even a \u201cnine and wine\u201d with the instructors.<\/p>\n Instruction ends by 5 p.m., leaving the evenings free for dinner and time together. Sea Island has a five-mile private beach, a Forbes Five-Star spa and restaurants ranging from Italian at Tavola to drinks at River Bar & Lounge. A bagpiper announces sunset each evening, adding a little ceremony to that lovely stretch between the last hole and dinner.<\/p>\n For newer golfers, playing a full 18 holes can be the bigger hurdle.<\/p>\n At Monarch Beach Golf Links<\/a> in Dana Point, California, a new set of shortened Caterpillar Tees is designed to make the course less intimidating and help newer golfers keep pace without spending the afternoon battling its full length. The idea was put into practice this spring during the inaugural Butterfly Invitational, a low-pressure 18-hole scramble organized by PGA professional Jackie Riegle. Roughly 40 of her students participated, most of them women, and for some it was their first time completing a full 18-hole round.<\/p>\n Waiting next door was a rather nice reward. Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach<\/a> has a private beach club, a spa and seven places to eat and drink. Groups can trade golf shoes for flip-flops and take the beach tram down to the Pacific for paddleboarding, cocktails around the fire pits or an afternoon on the sand.<\/p>\n Change in women\u2019s golf starts doesn\u2019t always start with adult players. Some begin much earlier.<\/p>\n In Louisville<\/a>, Kentucky, First Tee\u2013Louisville\u2019s Golf FORE Girls<\/a> program has been introducing girls to the game since 2018 with an all-female coaching staff and an environment built around learning, confidence and friendship. The city\u2019s connection to women\u2019s golf is about to become considerably more visible: in 2028, Valhalla Golf Club will host the Solheim Cup.<\/p>\n Of course, this is still Louisville, so bourbon is going to find its way into the weekend. More than a dozen distilleries operate in the city, and the food scene has found seemingly endless ways to put the spirit to work.<\/p>\n Golf doesn\u2019t always need to take itself quite so seriously, either.<\/p>\n At Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa<\/a> in New Hampshire\u2019s White Mountains, the nine-hole course comes with an option few golfers will have encountered before: a llama caddie. The resort\u2019s Llama Tee Time Trek pairs golfers with a llama that carries the clubs, accompanied by a handler, turning a round into something everyone will probably still be talking about over cocktails that evening.<\/p>\n Golf meets the Pacific at Monarch Beach. Image Credit: \u00a0Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach<\/p>\n The 19th Hole Is Only the Beginning<\/p>\n The scenery changes dramatically in Arizona, where golf cuts through the Sonoran Desert. At The Phoenician<\/a> in Scottsdale, the resort\u2019s 18-hole course climbs along the base of Camelback Mountain, but its new Golf View Villas may be even more appealing for friends who want to stay together.<\/p>\n With the course, pools, spa and restaurants all within the resort, the group can play 18 holes in the morning, scatter for the afternoon, and reconvene later. Or skip straight to apr\u00e8s-golf at the Tavern<\/a>, where the reward for surviving the scorecard comes in the form of an Adult Orange Creamsicle milkshake.<\/p>\n A few hours up the road, Las Vegas<\/a> turns the dial in another direction entirely. There are women-only lessons with LPGA professionals, Sip & Swing social nights and courses ranging from the Strip-side Wynn Golf Club to the desert landscape of Las Vegas Paiute Golf Resort. But Las Vegas has never had trouble filling the hours after golf.<\/p>\n Staying off the Strip at Green Valley Ranch puts Cascata Golf Club<\/a> within easy reach. The course is tucked into the desert foothills outside Boulder City, and this is one place where playing with a caddie is part of the experience rather than an extravagance tacked onto it.<\/p>\n Instead of four friends standing over their golf balls trying to decipher a course they have never played, there is someone who knows where to aim, where trouble is hiding and, hopefully, where to find the ball that just disappeared into the Nevada desert.<\/p>\n Afterward, Green Valley Ranch<\/a> is where the clubs\u2014and the car\u2014can stay put for the rest of the day. The resort\u2019s spa is reason enough to do so. If you book a massage, ask to have Teresa as your therapist; I am not prone to declaring anything \u201cthe best ever,\u201d but this one earned it. Consider it my preferred form of apr\u00e8s-golf recovery.<\/p>\n From there, the evening can move to a steak dinner at Hank\u2019s Fine Steaks & Martinis<\/a> and, for anyone not quite ready for bed, a few hands in the casino. Golf, spa, steak and a little gambling, all without leaving the resort. For a girls\u2019 trip, Green Valley Ranch makes a persuasive case for staying off the Strip.<\/p>\n And then there is Bermuda<\/a>, where geography works in a golfer\u2019s favor. The island packs an unusual amount of golf into just 21 square miles, which means less time getting between courses and more time actually playing them.<\/p>\n At The St. Regis Bermuda Resort<\/a>, Five Forts Golf Club runs along the Atlantic beside historic Fort St. Catherine. The par-62 course measures 4,043 yards, a friendly length for a group looking to enjoy the round rather than spend the day grinding through it. Once the clubs are put away, the decision is whether to head to the spa, claim a cabana on St. Catherine\u2019s Beach or stay for the hotel\u2019s nightly Champagne sabrage.<\/p>\n View of the 1st and 18th hole at the Old Course in St. Andrews from the balcony of the Old Course Hotel. Image Credit: Shutterstock\/Alexander Jung<\/p>\n Across the Pond, Golf Comes With History<\/p>\n Across the Atlantic, there is really only one place to begin.<\/p>\n St Andrews has long occupied a coveted place on golfers\u2019 wish lists, and women are no exception. In Golfbreaks\u2019 survey, both St Andrews and Scotland ranked among the most-mentioned dream destinations for female golfers. There is the Old Course, of course, but also the pleasure of staying somewhere where golf is not an activity you drive to in the morning. It is simply part of the town.<\/p>\n Rusacks St Andrews<\/a> sits beside the 18th fairway of the Old Course. Ladies can finish a round and be back at the hotel before anyone has had much time to complain about her score. Upstairs, 18 Rooftop looks across the course toward West Sands and the North Sea, a particularly good place to revisit the round over dinner and decide which shots have already improved in the retelling.<\/p>\n Rusacks also has a role in the future of women\u2019s golf as a Performance Partner of Saints Golf, the University of St Andrews\u2019 elite golf program. The partnership supports female collegiate players alongside the men\u2019s team. This season, Caitlin Maurice was selected for the Arnold Palmer Cup and Ellie Monk won the St Andrews Links Collegiate Championship.<\/p>\n That relationship feels particularly appropriate in a town so closely associated with golf history. Women have not always occupied equal space within that history, but the next generation is very much playing its way into it.<\/p>\n Foxhills<\/a> in Surrey hosted the third Women\u2019s Open in 1978 and nearly five decades later counts more than 200 women among its golf members, including Charley Hull and Georgia Hall. Two championship courses and a nine-hole par-3 share the property with a hotel, spa, tennis, padel and pickleball, all within easy reach of Heathrow.<\/p>\n North American golfers may encounter one unexpected complication in the UK. Many courses do not have rental sets readily available. Tim Watts of J-UK Golf<\/a> solves that problem by meeting visiting golfers at London-area courses with rental clubs and everything else needed for the round.<\/p>\n Outside Glasgow, JA Mar Hall Golf & Spa Resort<\/a> has recently emerged from a \u00a320 million transformation. The spa uses Scottish skincare brand ishga, including its 90-minute Tides of Change treatment, developed specifically with menopause in mind and designed around massage and seaweed-based skincare.<\/p>\n It is a small detail but a telling sign of who is being considered outside the golf course.<\/p>\n Ireland takes the golf trip on the road. Brendan Vacations\u2019<\/a> eight-day Ireland Fairways & Parklands itinerary comes with a private chauffeur and strings together some of the country\u2019s best-known courses, including Portmarnock, The K Club, Waterville, Ballybunion and Lahinch. Along the way are castle stays and detours to places such as the Ring of Kerry and Cliffs of Moher.<\/p>\n Portmarnock is home to an important piece of women\u2019s golf history. Portmarnock Golf Club ended its 127-year men-only membership policy in 2021, opening membership to women for the first time. A few years later, a group of women can build an entire Irish vacation around playing it.<\/p>\n Golf with a view in Crans-Montana, Switzerland. Image Credit: Casandra Karpiak<\/p>\n When the Destination Competes With the Golf<\/p>\n Then there are the golf trips where concentrating on the ball becomes difficult for an entirely different reason. High in the Swiss Alps, Crans-sur-Sierre Golf Club<\/a> sits roughly 4,900 feet above sea level in Crans-Montana<\/a>, with the Rh\u00f4ne Valley below and some of the Alps\u2019 highest peaks stretched across the horizon.<\/p>\n I understood the distraction once I played it myself. Hole No. 7 may be the one everyone photographs, but No. 12 asks you to hit toward mountains climbing roughly 12,000 feet into the distance. It is not a bad place to stop caring quite so much about par.<\/p>\n I stayed at Crans Ambassador<\/a>, but it was the mountains surrounding Crans-Montana that quickly became the main event. The Bisse du Tsittoret trail winds through alpine pastures toward the Ti\u00e8che waterfalls and black H\u00e9rens cows grazing beneath peaks that include the Matterhorn. Higher still, a sunrise excursion onto the glacier is the sort of morning that makes an early tee time seem considerably less important.<\/p>\n Six Senses Crans-Montana<\/a> makes an equally compelling case for spending the afternoon inside, with a 6,500-square-foot spa, indoor and outdoor pools, a hammam and a Biohack Recovery Lounge. Its Tee Off in the Alps package includes a daily green fee on the Ballesteros course, leaving the harder decision for the rest of the day: another round, a hike or the spa.<\/p>\n For some groups, the vacation itself can be a chance to finally get better at the game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
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