Turning Stone (Shenendoah)

Golf may be an adjunct to the Oneida Indians’ Turning Stone Casino Resort in Verona, which first opened its doors to visitors in 1993, but the tribe can now lay claim an early 1950s 9-hole course (Pleasant Knolls) in their burgeoning golf offering.

The less said about the bunkerless Pleasant Knolls course in Vernon the better, but when architect Rick Smith built the Shenendoah layout in 2000, he raised the golfing bar stratospherically, high enough for the Shenendoah to stagie the PGA Professional Championship in 2006.

Wrapping around three sides of the main hotel complex, the Shenendoah is not the headliner at the resort, that moniker is reserved for Tom Fazio’s Atunyote, which staged the now defunct Turning Stone Resort Championship between 2007 and 2010. However, the Shenendoah is a thoroughly modern and challenging test in its own right ,which is routed nicely around the property’s woods and wetlands.