I’ve been excited for a long weekend of golf. I kicked around a couple of ideas and finally decided on the Pinehurst area. The courses around here are close to each other, which would limit my time in the car, and the rates drop about this time of year. The Pinehurst Resort courses weren’t in the budget this trip, but I’d love to check those out one day.

I left Charlottesville early – about 4 AM – for my first course of the trip, Whispering Woods Golf Club. After a little over four hours in the car I got to the course early, hoping to hit some practice balls before heading to the first tee. I had plenty of time, but unfortunately the course doesn’t have a range. Normally, that doesn’t bother me but under these circumstances I really would have liked to get loose first. My mistake, I should have booked Whispering Woods later on in the trip.

I teed off shortly before 9 AM, getting my first taste of golf in the Pinehurst area since 2010. The area’s awesome landscape is really memorable. After just a couple holes I was excited for the next few days of golf with the beautiful pine trees. The setting at Whispering Woods was peaceful with all the nice-smelling pines. The course also has some elevation change and the sandy soil allows for a rugged look to some of the holes. There are also some cool-looking waste bunkers here.

Whispering Woods, designed by Ellis Maples, is a shorter course by today’s standards and the championship tees only play 6,324 yards. The slope is 70.8 and the rating is 134, with a par of 72. I thought the course played shorter than the yardage because of the doglegs. For such a short course, I found it to be a handful. It wasn’t really one where you lay back with a good strategy. Trying to find the flat parts of the fairways often meant I went with driver when I normally would lay up off the tee.

If you don’t find the flat portion of the fairways then all the uneven lies are going to be a challenge. I ended up with many stances that wanted to move the ball the opposite direction of where I wanted it to go. Downhill lies made it difficult to get the right flight into green complexes that rewarded a high shot. Also, once the ball landed it did a lot of rolling. Another thing that stood out about the difficulty were all the false edges where the ball would trickle away from the hole.

If your iron game is good then you can take advantage of the shorter holes. The par-5’s are easier. For example, the 3rd is one of the par-5’s and it is only 436 yards. It is slightly uphill, but there is plenty of width. I hit 3-wood off the tee and had one of those pesky uphill lies, but if I would have hit driver I could have hit the top of a hill and had the ball run out. The 14th is the short par-5 on the back nine and if someone can hug the tree line down the left side, the ball will hit on the downslope in the fairway.

I paid $39 which was reasonable, but I wouldn’t expect mint conditioning if playing here. The greens were the nicest part of the course and according to the course’s website, they were re-done last year. They were fairly fast and rolled fine, with a few wobbles along the way. The rest of the course was dry and could use some water. The fairways had okay coverage, with parts in good shape and other parts being worked on. The tees were thin and uneven, so not great.

Whispering Woods was fine for the price, but it has a couple funky doglegs and overall was just in average shape. I think you’d have to play here a couple times to get the hang of the layout with all the slope in the fairways. I played Firefox later on in the trip would definitely give the edge to those courses when it comes to value.

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):