It's easy to drive right past the unobtrusive white brick pillars in the village of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Before you know it, you've missed the small brass plaques announcing The Greenbrier. First-time visitors expect a flashy entrance. After all, this is the American icon that was named the 20th century's top resort by Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report. Every major travel magazine has ranked it one of the best in the world, especially among golf resorts.

Flashy

It's easy to drive right past the unobtrusive white brick pillars in the village of White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia. Before you know it, you've missed the small brass plaques announcing The Greenbrier. First-time visitors expect a flashy entrance. After all, this is the American icon that was named the 20th century's top resort by Andrew Harper's Hideaway Report. Every major travel magazine has ranked it one of the best in the world, especially among golf resorts.

Flashy is not The Greenbrier's style. Elegance is. You sense this at first sight of the dazzling white hotel, with its massive columns rising high above the front portico. During the past 230 years, the most powerful people in the world have stayed at this 635-room, 6,500-acre mountain estate—along with many simple folk.

Most guests prefer to stay in the rooms or suites in the main hotel, close to restaurants, lounges, theater, and shops. But the Spring Row cottages—cozy mini-suites with working fireplaces and long porches—are much more fun. They're a short stroll from the hotel, on the way to the Golf Club.

Three championship courses begin and end at the clubhouse. The Greenbrier Course, redesigned in 1977 by Jack Nicklaus for the 1979 Ryder Cup, was also the venue for the Solheim Cup in 1994. At 6,675 yards from the back tees, the par-72 layout isn't long, but every hole tests the mettle of recreational golfers. Most of the greens are so well guarded by bunkers or water that the only way to reach them is an airborne approach. The putting surfaces are often tiered, and always fast.

The Greenbrier has long been considered the most challenging of the three courses, but a close second is the Meadows. In 1999, Robert Cupp transformed the old Lakes layout into this 6,795-yard, par-71 track with sculpted greens and views of the surrounding Allegheny mountains. The course crisscrosses a deep streambed lined with stone-faced walls. Three approach shots cross these chasms to greens that slope back to front.

The Old White was the resort's first 18-hole course. Following an historic renovation, the Charles Blair Macdonald creation plays much as it did in 1914, when President Woodrow Wilson completed one of the first rounds. The 6,826-yard, par-70 layout has generous fairways, but the greens are diabolically bunkered and contoured. Macdonald modeled some holes after Scottish icons—the Redan at North Berwick (hole 8), the Alps at Prestwick (hole 13), and the Eden at St. Andrews (hole 15). Every hole has a descriptive plaque, which reminds golfers that they're playing in the footprints of golfing greats—and every U.S. president who's been a golfer (excepting the incumbent, Obama, though we expect the current golfer-in-chief to be out here soon).

For more than 20 years freelancer Dale Leatherman has specialized in golf and adventure travel. Assignments take her all over the world, but she's always happy to be back home playing mountain courses in West Virginia. She is president-elect of the Society of American Travel Writers.