Golf Is Having a Girls' Trip Moment

“Luxury 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,” says Megan Graham, Tournaments Manager at Golfbreaks. Women are spending accordingly, with the company’s internal sales data showing female customers spend £105 more per passenger than men and book 7.3 percent more mid- and long-haul trips.

The itinerary has room for a vineyard in Portugal, a private spa hale in Hawai‘i, sea swimming in Scotland or even a llama carrying the clubs through New Hampshire.

Where to Start

Cabot Cape Breton sits along the rugged coast of Nova Scotia, where two courses have turned a relatively remote corner of the island into one of Canada’s most coveted golf destinations. In SCOREGolf’s 2026 ranking of Canada’s Top 100 courses, Cabot Cliffs took the No. 1 spot, with Cabot Links at No. 2.

Cabot has also been putting more weight behind the women’s game. Its first professional sports partnership is with LPGA champion Brooke Henderson, and Women’s Golf Day programming has expanded across its properties. Women’s rental clubs are now available at every Cabot destination, and women make up half of the company’s executive team, with representation across golf operations, instruction, turf and caddie programs.

Having the country’s two top-ranked courses within the same resort is reason enough to pack the clubs. 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’s the sort of place where golf commands the day without swallowing the vacation.

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.

Frisco, 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.

There are also considerably more luxurious ways to work on a swing. At adults-only Sensei Lānaʻi, A Four Seasons Resort, 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.

It is golf camp, perhaps, but not the version most of us remember.

Coeur d’Alene Resort in Idaho comes closer to summer camp, albeit with considerably better accommodations. The resort sits on the edge of Lake Coeur d’Alene, and the golf course’s famous floating green is a movable island reachable by boat after the tee shot.

There Is More Than One Way to Play

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.

Sea Island, along Georgia’s Atlantic coast, has gone a step further by building trips specifically for women. Its Women’s Golf Getaways combine three championship courses and the resort’s 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 “nine and wine” with the instructors.

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.

For newer golfers, playing a full 18 holes can be the bigger hurdle.

At Monarch Beach Golf Links 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.

Waiting next door was a rather nice reward. Waldorf Astoria Monarch Beach 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.

Change in women’s golf starts doesn’t always start with adult players. Some begin much earlier.

In Louisville, Kentucky, First Tee–Louisville’s Golf FORE Girls 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’s connection to women’s golf is about to become considerably more visible: in 2028, Valhalla Golf Club will host the Solheim Cup.

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.

Golf doesn’t always need to take itself quite so seriously, either.

At Mountain View Grand Resort & Spa in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the nine-hole course comes with an option few golfers will have encountered before: a llama caddie. The resort’s 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.

The 19th Hole Is Only the Beginning

The scenery changes dramatically in Arizona, where golf cuts through the Sonoran Desert. At The Phoenician in Scottsdale, the resort’s 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.

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 après-golf at the Tavern, where the reward for surviving the scorecard comes in the form of an Adult Orange Creamsicle milkshake.

A few hours up the road, Las Vegas 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.

Staying off the Strip at Green Valley Ranch puts Cascata Golf Club 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.

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.

Afterward, Green Valley Ranch is where the clubs—and the car—can stay put for the rest of the day. The resort’s 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 “the best ever,” but this one earned it. Consider it my preferred form of après-golf recovery.

From there, the evening can move to a steak dinner at Hank’s Fine Steaks & Martinis 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’ trip, Green Valley Ranch makes a persuasive case for staying off the Strip.

And then there is Bermuda, where geography works in a golfer’s 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.

At The St. Regis Bermuda Resort, 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’s Beach or stay for the hotel’s nightly Champagne sabrage.

Across the Pond, Golf Comes With History

Across the Atlantic, there is really only one place to begin.

St Andrews has long occupied a coveted place on golfers’ wish lists, and women are no exception. In Golfbreaks’ 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.

Rusacks St Andrews 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.

Rusacks also has a role in the future of women’s golf as a Performance Partner of Saints Golf, the University of St Andrews’ elite golf program. The partnership supports female collegiate players alongside the men’s team. This season, Caitlin Maurice was selected for the Arnold Palmer Cup and Ellie Monk won the St Andrews Links Collegiate Championship.

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.

Foxhills in Surrey hosted the third Women’s 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.

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 solves that problem by meeting visiting golfers at London-area courses with rental clubs and everything else needed for the round.

Outside Glasgow, JA Mar Hall Golf & Spa Resort has recently emerged from a £20 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.

It is a small detail but a telling sign of who is being considered outside the golf course.

Ireland takes the golf trip on the road. Brendan Vacations’ eight-day Ireland Fairways & Parklands itinerary comes with a private chauffeur and strings together some of the country’s 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.

Portmarnock is home to an important piece of women’s 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.

When the Destination Competes With the Golf

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 sits roughly 4,900 feet above sea level in Crans-Montana, with the Rhône Valley below and some of the Alps’ highest peaks stretched across the horizon.

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.

I stayed at Crans Ambassador, 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 Tièche waterfalls and black Hérens 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.

Six Senses Crans-Montana 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.

For some groups, the vacation itself can be a chance to finally get better at the game.

At La Manga Club in Spain’s Murcia region, the five-day Total Golf Experience is designed for beginner and intermediate golfers who want more than a quick lesson before a round. Small-group sessions run for two hours each morning from Monday through Friday, covering everything from putting to the full swing, with an individualized plan for each golfer.

That still leaves most of the day free, which is rather important when the Mediterranean is nearby. La Manga has three 18-hole courses, but the five-star Grand Hyatt La Manga Club Golf & Spa also has 11 restaurants, a hydrotherapy circuit, tennis, padel and cycling. Beyond the resort are the beaches and walking trails of Calblanque Regional Park and watersports along the Mediterranean and Mar Menor coastlines.

Work on the swing in the morning, then stop thinking about it. Portugal makes that last part particularly easy.

Women in the Golfbreaks survey ranked the country among their dream golf destinations, and the Algarve helps explain why. Domes Lake Algarve sits in Vilamoura, minutes from five courses, with a golf concierge to handle tee times, equipment and transfers.

But this is also the Algarve, where there is little reason to rush from breakfast directly to the first tee. Sunrise yoga takes place beside the lake, with Soma Spa waiting for a slower afternoon. Dinner might mean Portuguese cooking one night and sushi and Japanese whisky the next.

Better yet, leave the resort for Ria Formosa, where oysters and regional wine make a pretty good argument for taking the afternoon off from golf.

By then, the original reason for the trip can almost feel beside the point.