Birdwood Golf Course

Birdwood Golf Course at the Boar's Head Resort in Charlottesville serves as the home course for the University of Virginia men's and women's golf programs, spread across more than 200 acres of rolling Piedmont landscape. A top-to-bottom redesign by Davis Love III and Love Golf Design, completed in 2020, transformed the course into a modern championship layout featuring Zoysia fairways, bentgrass greens, and fescue-native areas inspired by the Irish links tradition.

Birdwood Golf Course at the University of Virginia is among the historically layered golf settings in the American South, occupying land that was granted as an "upland wilderness" patent in 1739 — one of the earliest land grants in the Virginia colony. The property was eventually acquired by the University of Virginia Foundation in 1974, and nine years later, Baltimore-based architect Lindsay Ervin was commissioned to design the golf course on what had been known as Birdwood Farm. Ervin's design opened in 1984 as his first solo project, with Mrs. Nettie Jones instrumental in connecting Ervin to the project.

Ervin routed the original course through the gently rolling Piedmont terrain of the property, using the mature hardwood forest and the seasonal streams crossing the land as the primary design elements. The result was a parkland course that blended seamlessly with the academic landscape of Charlottesville, serving both as the home course for the University of Virginia's golf teams and as a public-access facility open to the community. In 2005, Pete Dye redid all of the bunkers across the course, updating the strategic presentation of the layout without altering Ervin's fundamental routing. The most significant transformation in Birdwood's history came with a complete redesign by Davis Love III and his firm Love Golf Design — headed by Davis Love III and his brother Mark Love — along with Scot Sherman.

The University of Virginia Foundation and Love Golf Design formalized the project with a signed contract, and the redesigned course reopened on July 1, 2020. Love's redesign incorporated all-new land not previously used by the course, adding a six-hole par-3 course and an 18-hole Himalayas putting green of nearly one acre in size alongside the redesigned championship layout. The renovation represented a significant investment in the course's future as both an athletic facility for UVA golf and a destination course for the broader Charlottesville golfing community. In its inaugural year following the redesign, Birdwood Golf Course was ranked by Golf Magazine as one of the top-ten courses in all of Virginia — recognition that confirmed Love's team had achieved something beyond a simple modernization of an existing campus course.

The redesigned Birdwood serves resort guests at the adjacent Boar's Head Resort, club members, and the broader Charlottesville community, while continuing to function as the official home course for the University of Virginia's men's and women's golf programs. The construction of the Love redesign incorporated Zoysia fairways and bentgrass greens, with fescue-native areas inspired by the Irish links tradition. The mature hardwoods and colonial-era landscape of the Birdwood Farm property — the same land that was patented as wilderness nearly three centuries ago — provide the setting that gives the course a historical resonance matched by few American golf venues. The six-hole par-3 course and Himalayas putting course added in 2020 give the property a variety of playing experiences that extend access to the game for golfers of all skill levels, fulfilling the public mission embedded in the course's identity since Ervin opened the original layout.