Biltmore Golf Club

Located on the grounds of the historic Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables, this Ross design winds through tropical landscaping with palm-lined fairways, water features, and well-bunkered green complexes. The course has hosted numerous professional events and remains a landmark of South Florida golf.

The Biltmore Golf Course in Coral Gables is among the historically layered public golf facilities in South Florida — a Donald Ross design from 1925 that opened with a Bobby Jones exhibition match, served as a military hospital during World War II, operated as a municipal course for Coral Gables residents for decades, and was ultimately restored by Brian Silva to its documented original condition as part of the Biltmore Hotel's rehabilitation into among the celebrated resort properties in the Miami metropolitan area. The course's history begins with the development of Coral Gables itself — the planned city that developer George Merrick began constructing in the early 1920s as the first planned community in Florida. The Biltmore Hotel, designed by architects Schultz and Weaver in a Spanish Renaissance Revival style that became the architectural signature of the community, anchored the development's resort ambitions. Donald Ross was engaged to design the golf course as part of the Biltmore complex, with ground broken in 1924.

On January 2, 1926, Bobby Jones and Tommy Armour — two of the most celebrated golfers of the era — played a 36-hole exhibition match to officially open the new course, an event that established the Biltmore as a destination of national significance from its earliest days of operation. Ross's design for the Coral Gables property reflected his characteristic approach to South Florida terrain: strategic use of the available acreage, green complexes with contours that rewarded precise approach play, and bunkering placed to define the optimal routes through each hole. The course complemented the grandeur of the Biltmore Hotel and the planned elegance of the Coral Gables streetscape surrounding it. The Second World War interrupted the Biltmore's career as a resort and golf destination.

The federal government requisitioned the hotel as a military hospital, and the property was used for medical care throughout the war years. The golf course continued in some form of operation during and after the war, and in 1945 the City of Coral Gables leased the remaining 18 holes from the federal government at $1 per year, establishing the public access model that has characterized the course ever since. The City of Coral Gables operated the course as a municipal facility for the decades following the war, while the Biltmore Hotel itself went through a lengthy period of institutional use before the city undertook its restoration in the 1980s and 1990s. The hotel reopened as a resort in 1987, and the golf course's rehabilitation followed.

In 2007, golf course architect Brian Silva — who had also restored the Seth Raynor course at The Everglades Club — completed a comprehensive restoration of the Biltmore course, working from Ross's original routing plans, aerial photographs, and design notes to recreate the authentic character of the 1925 layout. The restored course today serves as both the resort golf facility for the Biltmore Hotel and a municipal course for Coral Gables residents under the city's leasing arrangement — a hybrid model that reflects the complex ownership and operational history of the property since the New Deal era. The course is listed on the Florida Historic Golf Trail, recognized for its Ross pedigree, its association with Bobby Jones and Tommy Armour's opening exhibition, and its continuous presence in South Florida golf for a full century.