The Virginian Golf Club

Overview: The Virginian Golf Club in Bristol sits among the Appalachian foothills, where pastoral land and distant ridges give the course its spacious character. Tom Fazio's 18-hole design uses generous fairways, natural bumps and carefully shaped green approaches rather than enclosing every hole with dense woodland. The championship tees measure 7,025 yards at par 72, but the routing offers several ways to manage the ground. Zoysia fairways and changing elevation add a distinctly Southern texture to a course built around movement and view.

History: The Virginian opened in 1993 as a private golf club created around the rural landscape near Bristol. Fazio's routing was designed to keep the pastoral setting visible, using the natural folds of the land to separate the holes and establish different sightlines. The course has since developed a long-standing position in Virginia golf, while its architectural identity remains tied to the original Fazio design rather than to a later resort conversion.

Did You Know? The course's official hole-by-hole tour emphasizes that every hole has a different visual setting, from open pastoral views to framed approach corridors. That variety is a direct consequence of leaving the fairways connected to the surrounding countryside instead of hiding the land behind continuous tree lines.