The Evolution of Golf Travel

The Biggest Myth in Golf Travel

When it comes to golf travel, there are a lot of self-limiting misconceptions passed down through the folklore of the golf gods. The most common one: you have to stay on property to play resort courses.

Sometimes that’s true. A lot of times it isn’t.

The problem is that golfers tend to assume every destination works the same way. They hear how Pebble Beach or Pinehurst handles access and start applying those rules everywhere, often eliminating options or pricing themselves out before they’ve even looked at a tee sheet.

The Boom Never Ended

Covid is when it started, but that’s not the whole story anymore. That was six years ago. The boom never slowed down.

The U.S. saw 28 million on-course golfers in 2024, about 1.5 million more than the year prior. This was the biggest single-year jump since 2000, when Tiger inspired an entire generation to put down their N64 controller and pick up a golf club In 2025, participation climbed again to 29.1 million, while the number of rounds played reached another all-time high.

And this doesn’t stop at your local muni. We’re seeing similar trends across the industry, including private clubs and popular resorts.

Each of the past four years has approached record levels of people traveling for golf, with over 12 million people a year taking their game on the road from 2022-2025. That’s up 49% compared to pre-covid levels.

Destination golf got a lot more competitive, a lot faster than anyone expected. Golf courses aren’t getting built fast enough to keep up with all these new golfers, but they are certainly trying. Over the past five years, almost a third of new golf course openings have had a resort tie. Compare that to the 10% of existing courses currently affiliated with a resort and you can see that the landscape is changing quickly.

The Misconception

Eventually we hit the point where the top resorts booked out. The bucket-list courses came with an inflated price tag. The whole concept of a golf trip started to feel like a pipe dream reserved for guys with a spare $700 hotel night and a year of lead time.

Here’s the thing, though: that story is only true at some resorts. Golf destinations don’t all play by the same rulebook, and most golfers assume they do.

Take Kiawah Island. The Ocean Course and its sister layouts are open to the public, and tee times can be booked without ever booking a room, though resort guests get priority windows and a price break.

Compare that to Pinehurst, which is really two resorts in one. Non-resort guests can get onto Nos. 1, 3 and 5 on short notice, along with The Cradle, while Nos. 2, 4, 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 are locked behind a resort stay or membership.

Then there’s Pebble Beach, which is probably where this assumption comes from in the first place. Tee times are effectively guaranteed only to guests of the Lodge or the Inn at Spanish Bay, and if you’re not staying there, you’re fighting for scraps 24 hours out.

Three legendary golf destinations. Three completely different sets of rules. That’s not a myth golfers can navigate by instinct or by what their buddy told them after his trip in 2019. It’s a moving target, and it’s exactly why “just book the resort” stopped being good enough advice.

Build the Trip Around the Group

Planning trips for other golfers has made one thing pretty clear: the best answer usually isn’t “just stay at the resort.”

Most golf trip planning starts and ends with two questions: where do we want to play and which resort do we stay at?

I start with a different one: what does this group actually want out of the trip?

Sometimes the answer is a bucket-list course, and the smartest move is booking a VRBO down the road instead of the resort’s front door, then making separate tee times directly with the course. Same golf, a fraction of the lodging and food cost. Sometimes it means accepting a higher green fee to play off-property at a place with tighter access, because the savings on where you sleep and eat more than make up for it. And sometimes the right answer isn’t a famous name at all. It’s steering the group toward an under-the-radar destination that delivers just as good a golf experience without the markup, the crowds, or the year-long wait.

None of that works if you’re guessing. It works because someone has actually mapped out which resorts sell tee times to outsiders, which don’t, and where the hidden gems are that never make the bucket-list conversation in the first place. That’s the job. Not finding you a discount, but building a trip that fits how your group wants to play, stay, and spend, instead of forcing you into whatever one resort is willing to sell you.

The myth says you’re stuck with one path: book the room, pay the rate, take what’s available. The truth is there’s almost always more than one way onto the course you want to play. You just need someone who knows which one it is.

Two Inches Short is a place where amateur golfers can unapologetically be themselves. It’s where we can all relate to the greatest game ever played at a level we can all understand.

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