Golf in Charlotte

Host of the PGA’s Wyndham Championship from 1977 to 2007, Forest Oaks Country Club’s private course incorporates natural elements such as looming trees and severely sloping hills with manmade sand traps and water obstacles, challenging beginning and experienced golfers alike. Opened in 1962, the terrain was renovated in 2002 after the renowned Love Golf Design group reached out to professional golfers to find out what makes an ideal course. The main improvement, helmed by Davis Love III, was the resprigging of the fairway with bermuda grass, a strain of turf that can handle extreme temperature changes, and a redesign of the new greens. The course was featured on the PGA for over 30 years, and was enjoyed by Davis Love III as well as Rocco Mediate and many other professionals. While the golf course is the main attraction, the club also houses a pro shop, a 25-yard professional-size swimming pool, tennis courts, and a restaurant.

The clubhouse at Beacon Ridge Golf & Country Club is an ivory monument of colonial-era gentility with four columns and a neoclassical façade inspired by George Washington’s plantation home at Mount Vernon. Though impressive in its own right, the stately manor is hardly out of place when compared to the club’s golf course. Visitors to the grounds are greeted by a 6,494-yard circuit of well-kept bermuda fairways and penncross-bentgrass greens that winds through towering Carolina pines and bunkers of sand so pristinely white that they appear to be crushed marble or genetically evolved snowflakes that adapted to withstand the summer swelter.

The course reflects the vision of architect Gene Hamm, who showcases the natural charms of the North Carolina Sandhill region with rolling fairways, contoured greens, and water that comes into play on five holes. Tricky shot-making opportunities abound throughout the layout, especially at the 542-yard, par-5 fourth—the course’s most difficult hole—where golfers must clear a pond with their drive before navigating a fairway that doglegs sharply to the left as it approaches the green. To prepare for their round, golfers can stock up on divot tools or tees to use as toothpicks at the pro shop or warm up their swing and putting stroke at the synthetic-turf driving range and practice green.