First
Impressions
In
aerial
photographs, the white-columned grandeur of The Greenbrier and the
red-brick beauty of The Homestead are equally bewitching. When you
arrive in
person, however, that road into The Homestead climbs up a
rise then curves
downhill at an ideal angle to reveal the hotel’s
majestic central tower and its
adjoining wings—glimpses of golf to the
right, rocking chairs on the porch,
Jeeves-like bellmen always ready to
greet and serve. Arriving at The Greenbrier,
you don’t get the same
visual sweep or comparable elbow room to load and unload.
Old-World
Golf Course
Many
of you know
that the first tee of The Homestead’s Old Course has been in
continuous
operation longer than any other first tee in America. That
obscures the
fact that it’s an awkward, low-lying tee box on a dodgy opening
hole.
Having offered that flash of cold criticism, I now freely profess my
undying love for this 113-year-old golf course (Donald Ross and William
S. Flynn
are your layout men), which takes its players on a swift,
spirited ramble up and
down valley slopes. That said, there’s no
denying that the Old White, designed
by C.B. Macdonald and Seth Raynor
and beloved by Greenbrier visitors since 1913,
is a more solid design
and a more demanding test of skill than the Old Course at
The
Homestead.
Overall
Golf Course
Brochures
on golf
at The Homestead call Flynn’s 1923 Cascades Course the “finest mountain
golf course in the U.S.” I freely concur. When I dream
about
golf, in my dream I’m hitting a pure shot into the par-3 fourth, putting
out then crossing the street to start pounding my way over the
mysterious,
mountainous, wide, wonderful, slightly blind par-5 fifth.
At The Greenbrier,
there is first-class golf. There’s a Seth Raynor
course (The Greenbrier 18) that
became a Nicklaus redesign where they
played the 1979 Ryder Cup. There’s a
sporty, modern Bob Cupp-redesigned
course (The Meadows) on which I’ve played an
interesting match or two.
And now there’s a swank Fazio installation, down the
road at the
Sporting Club. But there’s no Cascades.
Post-Round
Libation Setting
The
19th
hole at the The Greenbrier’s main golf clubhouse (named for Sam Snead and
decorated appropriately) has seating you sink thankfully into, large
but
unobtrusive TVs and free-pouring bartenders who can tell in a
glance if you shot
a nice number or played like crap. Homestead
golfers can do the drink-and-square-up ritual immediately after golf at
the
Cascades or Lower Cascades, but there is so much to do back at the
main hotel
one tends to scrape the spikes clean and jump right into a
Homestead shuttle. Most
Homestead regulars, arriving at the hotel in
early evening, pop straight into
Sam Snead’s Tavern, where the
memorabilia, the buzz and the village-pub setting
of the place will
provide as fine a setting for tale-swapping as any golfer
requires.
Lobby
Experience
It’s
often been said
that The Greenbrier is much more a draw for the white-shoe,
Social
Register type of patron than The Homestead is. Which is why my wife—whose
favorite indoor sport is watching people pay full retail in exclusive
boutiques
without giving it much thought—prefers prowling The
Greenbrier’s concourse of
shops more than The Homestead’s. The
Homestead’s main gathering space is grander and
more relaxing, yes, but
The Greenbrier’s is livelier and better for
people-watching.
