Golf in Ballenger Creek

Nestled in the rolling hills of Maryland's countryside, the Wakefield Valley Golf Club showcases three different nine-hole courses. Each course presents a unique set of challenges, with the green course showcasing lengthy par 5s and the white course challenging golfers with hilly terrain and water holes that lure errant shots and experimental scuba-tank golf bags. The gold course, meanwhile, sets up demanding tee shots into narrow fairways, as seen on its signature eighth hole, where water guards the green on all sides.

Golfers can warm up for rounds at the driving range and practice green or employ the swing-honing advice of PGA Professional Scott Magee, who teaches enough students to believe that he will find one who can pull a putter from a stone. Guests can also refuel rumbling stomachs with casual food and drinks at Fenby’s Restaurant.

Course architect Gary Player remarked that Raspberry Plain, once an 18th-century plantation, “was made for a golf course.” Inspired by this ideal setting, he dreamed up the links-style course at Raspberry Falls Golf & Hunt Club, whose meandering brooks, stone walls, and stacked-sod bunkers evoke Scotland, while its vista of the Catoctin Mountains remind players they’re in Virginia. Farther south, Augustine Golf Club's award-winning course rivals Raspberry Falls’ natural beauty with its distinctive par 4s sculpted by Rick Jacobson. Although the greens at Augustine declined for a few years, recent renovations have restored the course to its former glory, once again luring golfers to its babbling streams and forest.

These golf havens have more than picturesque views in common—they are two of six award-winning courses united by Raspberry Golf Management’s portfolio, which stretches from Virginia to Pennsylvania and skips over to Arizona. Gary Player’s design team for Raspberry Falls included Tim Freeland, who went on to design two of the firm’s other courses: Royal Manchester Golf Links, whose bentgrass fairways sidle up to the Susquehanna River, and Old Hickory Golf Club, a parkland-style course crisscrossed by Beaver Creek. The management company's other gems include The Legacy Golf Resort, where cowboys used to ride their rocking horses around a 7,500-acre ranch, and Bull Run Golf Club, which sprawls across more than 450 acres of meadows and woodlands at the foot of the Bull Run Mountains.

With four sets of tees to choose from, each of the 18 holes that comprise Flatbush Golf Course reveal rewarding mental and physical challenges for golfers of every stripe. The course's lush chlorophyll-laden carpet stretches to 6,671 yards from the back tees, and brings into play obstacles such as water hazards on eight holes, elevated greens, and sudden impulses to plant a vegetable garden. The most difficult hole on the course proves to be number 4, a 450-yard par 4 with water on either side of the fairway and a wide, shallow green guarded by a large bunker to the front right. On the back nine, number 16 grants players a clear view of the hazards that lay before them, allowing them ample time to triangulate a route to safety.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 71 course
• Four tee options
• Total length of 6,671 yards from the back tees
• Rating of 71.6 from the back tees
• Slope of 121 from the back tees

Clubgolf Performance Center members receive unlimited access to the indoor facility's myriad game-improving services. Observe, critique, and apply subtitles to your swing with video analysis and exchange golfer trading cards with experienced, PGA-certified club-wielders on the 1,200-square-foot putting green. During a professional diagnostic, Clubgolf's instructors will analyze and evaluate each knee bend and balance shift of your game, then prescribe a training regimen to help ensure better dimpled-ball smacking. Members can also attend complimentary golf classes, choosing from more than 15 courses offered each week, and golf-specific fitness programs, such as tee-lifting and knickerbocker-modeling practice.

Montgomery Village Golf Club's Edmund Ault–designed course sprawls across 6,726 yards of emerald corridors cleaved through the arboreal heart of Montgomery County. Fresh off recent refurbishments that include new tee boxes and switching to a bermuda hybrid grass, management continues to improve on a course that has hosted multiple PGA-sanctioned events and royal grass-grazing parties for traveling goat monarchs. Fairways tunnel through unforgiving tree lines as golfers swing their way toward each green, where fast surfaces form breaking putts. Alongside the pristine par 71, the club's grass-tee driving range, putting green, and full-service pro shop help streamline clubbers' birdie-hunting skills, and the Willow Tree Inn's restaurant and grill keeps players from dining on freshly torn divots with an all-day menu of entrees and drinks.

Course at a Glance:

• Designed by Edmund Ault
• 18-hole, par 71 course
• Length of 6,726 yards from the farthest tees
• Course rating of 72.6 from the farthest tees
• Slope rating of 126 from the farthest tees

After spending his formative years helping his father to operate multiple golf facilities, John Invernizzi decided to dedicate his adult life to spreading the gospel of the game. The PGA pro opened Hereford Golf Center in 1995 with the aim of creating a pressure-free space for golfers of all stripes to hone their swings, learn to appreciate the game, and debate about which club would be the most useful to ward off feral caddies. In the ensuing 17 years, clubbers have been hitting practice balls at the center’s 36-stall driving range, replete with eight target greens that range from 50 to 260 yards.

The adjacent Lost Falls Miniature Golf Course takes friendly competitors careening past two ponds, a large stream, and a mysterious cave as they steer golf balls toward pintsize flagsticks. True to his mission of making golf fun and accessible for everyone, John and the staff at Hereford Golf Center provide clubs free of charge, sparing clubless players from hastily purchasing one or digging in their backyard for a conveniently shaped mastodon bone.