Golf travel
Golf in Barbados
The easternmost Caribbean island, and a gated-golf one: the courses are genuinely good and mostly sit behind a room key or a membership. Sandy Lane's 45 holes — two Tom Fazio 18s and a 1961 nine — are the reason golfers come.
Dry season December–May; sweet spot February–April; best value late April–May. Hurricane season officially June–November
Barbados is a luxury holiday island with unusually serious golf attached — which is a different proposition from a golf destination, and worth understanding before you book. The island's best courses are excellent. They are also, almost without exception, behind a door: a hotel room key, a membership, or a short-stay booking. Barbados is not a green-fee-hopping island the way Scotland or Portugal is, and the single most common mistake visiting golfers make is assuming it works like one.
The centre of it is Sandy Lane on the west coast, whose 45 holes include two Tom Fazio courses — The Country Club, which hosted a World Cup, and The Green Monkey, carved out of an old limestone quarry and playable only if you are staying at the hotel. Inland, Apes Hill is members-and-short-stay-guests only despite what a lot of listings claim, and Royal Westmoreland is a resort-community course. The genuinely affordable public round is Barbados Golf Club, at roughly a third of Sandy Lane's Country Club fee.
The rest of the case for Barbados is strong and straightforward: one of the best-connected islands in the Caribbean from Britain, an unusually long dry season running December to May, and an eastern Atlantic position that keeps it off the main hurricane track. Our Barbados guide covers Sandy Lane in full — who can play which course, what it actually costs, and the maintenance small print that catches people out.