Golf Digest – Six affordable golf trip destinations that need to be on your bucket list

Original article written by Stephen Hennessey and David Duncan for Golf Digest

Golf trips are good for the soul. They’re also getting harder on our wallets. Travel to any top-tier resort, and you expect to pay thousands of dollars for golf, lodging, food, etc.—and that’s before travel. The boom in golf post-COVID has led to green fees increasing by 20 percent since 2019, per the National Golf Foundation. That might be in line with inflation and what we’d expect, but it doesn’t make it any easier to pay.

We’re championing some of our favorite destinations that are more palatable on our bank accounts. Our guiding light were locations that still provide epic golf but with tee times usually less than $200. It’s tougher to do in 2025, but for those seeking a deal, you’ve come to the right place.

BIRMINGHAM, ALABAMA

You can’t go to many regions in Alabama without encountering one of the 11 Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail sites, so any travel trip should start there. Birmingham is geographically central with a vibrant cultural and entertainment scene, as well as the state’s best concentration of good courses that touch environments from the tail end of the Appalachian Mountains to the south-central plains.

Dating to 1903, Highland Park Golf Course is an affordable and easily walkable neighborhood course just blocks from the hip Five Points South district and is the perfect entrée into Birmingham-area golf with newly renovated holes that vastly outpunch their price and scorecard yardage.

Set on a large private farm a little over an hour south of the city, FarmLinks at Pursell Farms is a bucolic Michael Hurdzan-Dana Fry design that alternates scenes between meadow, forest and foothills, including the magisterial par-3 fifth that plunges almost 200 feet straight down. Private multi-room cottages are available for groups.

Located 30 minutes north of Birmingham, Limestone Springs Golf Club is an everyman’s Shoal Creek, the No. 1 course in the state. The holes, designed by Alabama-native Jerry Pate, move out and back through an upper mountain valley studded with limestone outcroppings, myriad stream crossings and two picturesque finishing holes running tightly along lakes.

Often overshadowed by higher-ranked Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail stops, Oxmoor Valley takes a backseat to none for pure adventure, particularly the thrill-a-minute Ridge Course riding big elevation changes near an old quarry. The Valley 18 is more sublime, though the first hole drops over 100 feet off the tee, and the 13th is one of the most interesting Biarritz par 3s we’ve seen.

Ross Bridge is the only single-course venue on the RTJ Trail, but the design needs no companion. The massive holes (it can stretch to over 8,100 yards) play around and across amphitheaters of water and present ample opportunities to attack corners and hit heroic shots into equally sizable greens.