Golf in Salisbury

PGA professional Jason Rockhold stows shiny nuggets of golf wisdom up his argyle-print sleeves accrued from a competitive career as a mini-tour golf professional and a coaching tenure that includes more than 10,000 private lessons. Endowed with a keen eye for swing deficiencies, Jason analyzes his students' swings as they crush orbs, patiently proffering corrective advice to help players add distance to their drives, precision to their short game, and flair to their post-swing pose. With covered and heated hitting stalls, clinics can be conducted year-round regardless of weather conditions, and video lessons enlist V1 video analysis to provide pupils with intricate data about their swing, as well as a visual aid to complement Jason's analytical explication.

When they took over Jimmy Mac’s Golf Range, PGA professional Brad “Smiley” Latimer and his wife Pam knew they had their work cut out for them. The couple dove right in: they resurfaced the miniature golf course, illuminated its brick-lined pathways with nearly 100 solar lights, acquired a FlightScope Launch Monitor for lessons, and stocked on the driving range with new Titleist and Callaway balls. Even after completing these renovations, they continue to revamp the facilities. The 18-hole mini-golf course now features two cascading waterfalls, babbling brooks that wend along turf fairways, and new putters that send colorful golf balls into holes or to the one-eyed pirate living under the course bridge to fulfill his dream of a new ocular orb.

A 325-yard driving range showcases 25,000 square feet of Bermuda grass tees and 20 artificial turf hitting stations featuring laser yardage readers. The range has covered and uncovered stations, as well as lights that let golfers swing even after the sun has started to snore. Lessons provide the instructional guidance of a professional while taking advantage of the center’s practice bunker and chipping and pitching greens, developing swings dependable enough to take down rabid ball washers.

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.

Built in 1969 and having hosted the 2001 National Golf Association Triad Classic, Pine Knolls Golf Club has brought a long and sparkling history to its location in northeast Forsyth County. In 2006, two brothers-in-law from Ireland—Graham, a retired professional motorcycle racer and Pearse, a PGA professional—purchased the course. Today, they carry on its tradition of challenging and enjoyable play. To conquer the 6,338-yard layout, golfers must decipher the course’s small and complex greens, which requires even more concentration than geocaching for holes on a course that spans an entire city.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 72 course

• Total length of 6,338 yards from the back tees

• Course rating of 72.4 from the back tees

• Course slope of 123 from the back tees

The founders of Cadillac Golf Ranch felt that most practice ranges were too impersonal, never quite feeling like home. With that in mind, they designed what they envisioned a "club without a golf course," replete with all the luxuries and camaraderie of a full-scale course. Dimpled orbs take flight within the well-manicured bermuda-grass alleyways of Cadillac Golf Ranch's 60,000-square-foot driving range. Synthetic hitting mats unfurl underneath a rustic, heated shelter and real grass launch pads purr in appreciation of artfully shaped divots. Practice sand traps emulate the testy lies of fairway bunkers, and the range also boasts more nettled hitting areas to fine-tune shots out of the rough.

Putt-putt protégés can smooth out chips and putts at the club's indoor and outdoor short-game facilities or crush drives in their indoor hitting bays—where swing-analysis software breaks down each pendulous motion and video playback introduces golfers to a digital doppelganger soon to become their inferior. Back muscles weary from an intense practice session can convalesce on the overstuffed leather couches of the ranch's lounge, which boasts two 55-inch TVs.

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.