Caves Valley Golf Club

Caves Valley Golf Club, opened in 1991 to a Tom Fazio design, is a member-owned, not-for-profit club on 962 acres of rolling hills, pastures, woods, and wetlands in Owings Mills. It is capped at roughly 600 members, admits by invitation only with no published application process, and is explicitly built in the golf-only, ultra-exclusive mold of clubs like Pine Valley and Merion. Its national significance is current, not just historical: after a major Fazio Design Group renovation completed in 2025 (which shifted the course from a par-72 to a par-70 and added nearly 60 yards), Caves Valley hosted its second BMW Championship in five years, following its first in 2021 (won by Patrick Cantlay over Bryson DeChambeau in a six-hole playoff).

What elevates Caves Valley beyond a pure destination-exception case, like Merion, is a real residential layer discovered during this research: a gated enclave of custom luxury homes -- appearing across sources as 'The Residences of Caves Valley,' 'Residences at Caves Valley,' or simply the 'Caves Valley' neighborhood -- sits on multi-acre lots (roughly 1 to 6+ acres, with homes commonly exceeding 11,000 square feet) within the club's property, governed by a full-service concierge HOA. Consistent secondary reporting states that Caves Valley Golf Club membership is not a requirement for homeownership there, and that membership is available to residents separately. No page on the club's own site was found during this pass describing the residential community directly, so while the community's existence is well-corroborated across multiple independent brokerage and real-estate content sources, it should be treated as secondary-source-confirmed rather than fully primary-source-verified until a buyer or a future research pass can confirm directly with the club or the HOA.