Golf West Virginia
Golf West Virginia
"Almost heaven...West Virginia." Bill & Taffy Danoff and John Denver made the state famous years ago with the hit tune, Country Roads, but they’re not really telling golfers anything new.
Ready for a challenge? Are you really? Try this on for size: 7121 par-72 yards, with a course rating of 74.8 and a slope rating of 143! That’s Glade Springs’ Cobb Course. Stonehaven is the other 18-hole championship course in this truly beautiful, magical daily-fee golf club. A Roy Cobb design located just 5 miles from Raleigh County Memorial Airport, this incredible and reasonable public resort course also offers canoeing, kayaking, fishing (including fly fishing,) tennis, swimming, sporting clays, horseback riding, biking, a fitness center, bowling, and a full-service spa. In the winter, there’s free skiing, and in the summer there’s free golf for those who stay at the hotel! Wondering about the other course? The Stonehaven, features non-returning nines, and incredibly beautiful melding of natural landscape and created water hazards, for on some of the most picturesque terrain in the state, an additional 7200 yards of it! Starts to sound like a pretty good golf vacation destination all by itself, doesn’t it? Don’t stop there though the rest of the state is far too much fun!
Robert Trent Jones brings us the Bel Meadow in Clarksburg. An 18-hole championship course, it offers up offering 6,938 par-72 yards with a course rating of 72.4 and a slope rating of 126. Opening in 1966, this gem is now well maintained, and challenging. Sand traps and water hazards are involved on most all holes, and the 17th hole, a par-4, requires two shots over water! Privately owned and operated, the rates are impossible to beat!
Just down the road from Clarksburg is the #1 course in the country. Named after its legendary designer, the Pete Dye is a true masterpiece. Providing an authentic integration of golf and nature, one feels an attachment to the very soil it’s made from. Amongst the Top 100 in the country several times and ways, the two descriptions offered up over and over again are Challenging and Visually Stunning, and both are absolutely true. Consider this: 7248 par-72 yards, with a course rating of 76.2 and a slope rating of, are you sitting down? 148 ! The easiest tees on here still require 6022 yards for a course rating of 69.6 and a slope rating of 124! The course is just flat out exciting – perhaps the most exciting golf course in the country, certainly the best Pete Dye has ever made. Out of town members and guests have the option of staying at the Black Diamond Lodge, a 2-story haven which can sleep up to 16 people comfortably, with 4 master bedrooms per floor, or at one of the 18 spacious townhouses. Regardless, you’ll find the accommodations quite comfortable and appealing, with all the warmth and vistas one would expect from a facility of this caliber. A membership club, limited play is offered. Incidentally, this is the home of the Peter Dye Classic. At the heart of it all is the PGA, and related charities. Playing on this course is sure to become one of your fondest of memories, an experience to last a lifetime.
Almost heaven? For golfers, West Virginia may be as close as it gets! Make West Virginia your golf vacation spot this year, and you’re certain to return for many years to come!
