Golf in Idylwood

Course designer Tom Clark of Ault, Clark, & Associates earned Pleasant Valley Golf Club a 4.5-star rating from Golf Digest, whose editors applauded the architect’s creativity in the site’s rolling hills and dense hardwood forest. Clark’s 18-hole brainchild allows players to tee up from one of four tee boxes and test their mettle against the par 72 course, taking care to avoid the water in play on six holes and the grassy meadows that lie outside the fairway borders. Players can bookend their round with a warm-up session on the range and a cooldown at the grill, helped along by a club sandwich, a Gatorade, or a glass of ice water dumped on an overused foot wedge.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 72 course
• Total length of 6,915 yards from the back tees
• Course rating of 73.5 from the back tees
• Course slope of 137 from the back tees
• Four sets of tees per hole
• Scorecard

Sculpted into the rolling hills of Northern Virginia and designed by prolific course architect Dan Maples, South Riding Golf Club’s course plots a challenging path through mature timbers and glassy waters. A fleet of golf carts equipped with GPS technology helps players navigate the 7,148-yard chain of fairways by giving them the distance to upcoming hazards, greens, and blitzing linebackers emerging from the rough. Streams and ponds ripple throughout the course, including on the par-3 13th hole, where golfers are faced with a forced carry over a pond situated between tee and green. The club’s grass-tee driving range, short-game area, practice bunker, and putting green allow players to nurture their relationship with their putter, wedges, irons, woods, or modified soup ladles. When not conquering the course, duffers can take advantage of South Riding's modern clubhouse, fully stocked pro shop, and staff of golf instructors.

Course at a Glance:

• Designed by Dan Maples
• 18-hole, par-72 course
• Length of 7,148 yards from the farthest tees
• Course rating of 74.8 from the farthest tees
• Slope rating of 140 from the farthest tees
• Five tee options (including blended tee layout)

PGA instructor Kevin Hamluk tailors golf instruction to the individual swing habits and physical limitations of his students, demonstrating a successful approach that earned him a spot as a finalist in the 2012 Best Young Teacher awards from Golf Digest. Kevin works with his students to develop a dependable swing that fits their bodies and improves their ability to ward off feral flagsticks. Along with providing private lessons on the range, Kevin offers clinics that cover the full-swing, short-game, or putting techniques and online video lessons that involve students sending him videos of their swings for analysis, corrective feedback, and a direct line to casting agents.

At Sumner Fitness, a Titleist-certified instructor obtains a player's golf history and identifies swing problems using physical screening, golf biomechanics, and human eyes. With a golf dossier in hand, the links expert will create a program tailored to your needs and follow up your on-site evaluation with an email containing customized results to help enhance golf performance. By combining physical workouts with an improved technique, both weekend swingers and pros can maximize distance and accuracy.

Komodo dragons, quicksand, and headhunter’s darts are just some of the dangers that lurk in the jungle depths of the Perils of the Lost Jungle miniature golf course at Woody’s Golf Range, whose innovative attractions caught the eye of The Washington Post and earned it a place in Newsweek Magazine’s recommended mini-golf courses in 2005. Harder hitting clubs hone their swings at the driving range. Golfers can spend their time there digging up divots in Patriot-Bermuda-grass hitting stations or sending balls whistling over AstroTurf mats. The range’s heated, lighted, and covered stalls let players practice year-round. Along with separate practice areas for pitching and chipping, a sand trap invites golfers to practice the best way to get out of a bad lie—by digging an escape tunnel. Guests can trade in their clubs for bats at four softball cages and five baseball cages, and themed picnic areas enable groups to turn their visit into a day-long extravaganza.

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.