Golf in Huntersville

Designed by golf legend Arnold Palmer, Birkdale Golf Club’s course transforms natural beauty into challenging obstacles, with 200 acres of rolling hills intersected by streams and framed by mature pines. The course’s bermuda fairways lie beyond elevation changes that give way to greenscapes festooned with ponds and deep, stone-lined bunkers that test players to use every club in their bags before desperately reaching for the oversized soup ladle. Once approach shots find the green, golfers must putt precisely atop the firm and true crenshaw bentgrass greens.

Birkdale Golf Club pampers players before and after rounds with a practice range and onsite tavern trimmed with rich wood hues and green leather barstools. The club also staffs a team of PGA pro instructors who school pupils in the arts of swinging and scorecard penmanship with private lessons and group clinics.

Course at a Glance:

• Par 72
• Four sets of tees
• Length of 7,013 yards from back tees
• Course rating of 74.3 from back tees
• Slope rating of 138 from back tees

After 13 years as a golf instructor, Gary Sinquefield has boiled his teaching style down to a simple method that involves focusing on each player's swinging motions and eliminating extraneous movements. By simplifying the often convoluted and conflicting messages of swing improvement, Gary makes it possible for players of all skill levels to develop a consistent swing that stands up even during high winds or airport-security pat-downs. During private lessons, students take shots inside a golf simulator while Gary scrutinizes swing tendencies from every angle and shot type. A video camera records the process frame by frame for later analysis so that golfers can see swing tendencies such as poor alignment or signs of repeated sweaty-palm syndrome. At the end of the lesson, players leave with an action plan to develop their game.

Designed by three-time U.S. Open champion Hale Irwin, the course at Waterford Golf Club hugs the banks of the Catawba River, immersing players in a wooded landscape teeming with natural obstacles and omnipresent waterways. Golfers must manipulate the flight, angle, and lethargic attitude of their shots to avoid dense thickets of towering hardwoods that line Bermuda fairways and water that comes into play on 16 of 18 holes.

Players tee off from one of four sets of tees, each named after a world-famous course, and send shots skyward in pursuit of a final resting place on bentgrass greens. Pre- or post-round, players can hit range balls or piñatas filled with divot tools off of grass tees or hone short-game finesse at the club's practice facility.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 72 course
• Total length of 6,942 yards from the back tees
• Course rating of 72.9 from the back tees
• Course slope of 137 from the back tees
• Four sets of tees per hole
• Scorecard

Part of a small minority of golf coaches who have attained the rarefied title of PGA Master Professional in Instruction, Scott Fossum has honed swings with a results-oriented approach for 18 years. Scott molds sputtering swings into reliable motions by first developing solid contact and direction control before, if necessary, helping golfers add distance to their shots by teaching them how to hit the cart path every time. In lessons, the incisive instructor often relies on video swing analysis to enhance his own diagnostic skills and help golfers gain a better understanding of their own natural swings. Having logged more than 1,200 hours each year conducting lessons at Charlotte Golf Links, Scott sprinkles golf wisdom onto players of all abilities, from fine-tuning the herculean drives of low handicappers to teaching youngsters how to tame a bucking golf cart in junior development programs.

The moment his father first put a golf club in his hands, the then 11-year-old Bruce Parker knew it was the beginning of a lifelong dedication to the game. Bruce went on to star as the No. 1 golfer on his high-school team for four years, play on scholarship for the Georgia State University team, and enter the PGA as an apprentice in 1994. Through it all, Bruce never thought of leaving golf to pursue a career in the more glamorous world of croquet. When asked, Bruce still says that spending a day at the links is his favorite activity.

Today, Bruce puts his pin-hunting prowess and enthusiasm for the game to work while conducting lessons at The Effortless Golf Center. A driving range with both grass and artificial-turf hitting areas, lights for after-hours practice, and high-caliber practice balls provides an ideal training ground for Bruce to cure all forms of golf-game maladies, such as a slice-prone swing or a driver that has an irrational fear of fairways.