Golf in Winchester

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)

When 2010 U.S. Open winner Graeme McDowell—a fixture among the top 20 golfers in the world for the past three years—needs a bit of swing advice, he often turns to his friend and frequent playing partner, John O'Leary. The head of his eponymous Golf Academy, O'Leary began coaching after experiencing his own share of success in the professional ranks, where he won 15 PGA and mini-tour events and earned a berth in the 2007 PGA Championship. While he occasionally jousts putters with some of the world's top golfers, John's instructional style embraces players of all ages and abilities. With an emphasis on fundamentals and fun, he helps golfers hone everything from swings that produce long, straight drives to strokes that consistently hole short putts. John also makes use of V1 Video Swing analysis during lessons, camps, and clinics, allowing his students to see their swing firsthand and determine if they missed a belt loop.

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.

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.

Framed by the rising crags of the Blue Ridge Mountains, Blue Ridge Shadows Golf Club’s 18-hole course incorporates mature hardwoods, immaculate greens, and dramatic elevation changes into a pristine layout that earned a position on _Golfweek_’s list of the Best Courses You Can Play in 2009. Cresting hilltops give way to sweeping panoramas of the natural surroundings, including a 60-foot waterfall stationed behind the 18th green that used to host Gary Player's famed cliff-diving exhibitions. A grass-tee driving range, large putting green, and short-game practice area unfurl across the mountainside terrain, helping players warm up neglected swings. Additionally, players can prepare for an upcoming round with a lesson from Blue Ridge’s staff of sage instructors or by scrutinizing the course’s splendor from the wraparound terrace of the stately clubhouse.

Course at a Glance:

• 18-hole, par 72 course designed by Tom Clark
• Length of 7,315 yards from the farthest tees
• Course rating of 75.5 from the farthest tees
• Slope rating of 143 from the farthest tees
• Five tee options