White Plains Golf Course (White Plains, MD on 07/01/17)

Our second round of the day was at White Plains Golf Course, about 25 minutes from our morning round. Southern Maryland doesn’t have many courses so I didn’t too get picky about our afternoon round. My only criteria was that they hadn’t aerated within the last couple weeks!

When I made the 3pm tee time, the proshop told me that they are pretty quiet in the afternoons. Sure enough, we got there about a half hour before our tee time and the course was deserted! I saw a group on the 9th when we teed off and then a few singles, but it was especially quiet for a holiday weekend. The proshop let us out early, which was nice and we got done in about 3 hours. That allowed us to get a nice dinner at a decent time, back in Virginia!

White Plains is another county course located in a newer area of town. I’m not sure if people commute into D.C. from here but there sure are a lot of condo communities around. You get a glimpse of the condos from the perimeter holes, but you’ll have to hit a big foul ball to get to them. Every hole is tree lined and there is some minor elevation change. The course offers some wooded scenery for being in such an urban area.

What I found unusual is that White Plains seemed more like a course that you’d find in Western Maryland or even in West Virginia! The terrain didn’t have any of the marshy look that I’d expect for an area east of the Potomac. Combine that with the compact layout, the forrested look, and the course maxing out at 6300 yards and I never would have guessed that I was in Southern Maryland! Oh and apparently the surrounding countryside has a high number of Amish people as we passed by farm after farm and horse carriage after horse carriage on the way to the course! That part felt like Pennsylvania, so my internal GPS was all messed up.

We played the blue tees which are 69.4/122/6277 but don’t let that trick you into thinking the course is easy. Although it likely will be if you hit it straight! The course is a par 70 with only two par 5’s and if you get the tee shots off-line here it will be a hair pulling out kind of day, with narrow fairways and many trees in play! I drove it great losing only two tee shots and paid dearly with a double and an other.

The distance won’t bother you, but this is the style of course where you can make a string of good holes and then one can kill the scorecard. There is very little forgiveness if you miss the fairway! Off the fairways most of the ground is cleaned out, but I had no idea where to start looking for my ball. If you are crooked, I hope you like squirrels and spiders as avoiding them should be your goal for the next few hours!

When it comes to interesting holes at White Plains there weren’t many that stood out to me. Long par 3’s and mid length par 4’s are the bulk of the holes. The 17th, a 200 yard par 3, was my favorite hole! It plays to a green that is on a hillside which slopes from right to left. Missing left is no good because the ball will kick down the hill and into some trees. The green is large and framed by trees behind it so it is a playable, long par 3 with a good look.

The conditions at White Plains were very average and for $38 riding, didn’t seem like a good value. If I was golfing here by myself I would walked for $20, so it looks like the cart rental fee is where they get you! I’d call the conditions playable, but not much more than that. The ground was super firm so everything ran out for miles which meant you really needed to thread the needle on some of the drives. The course had that dried out, brown look off the tees and fairways that the 2014 U.S. Open made popular! The tees were surprisingly nice while the fairways were your typical bermuda consistency. The greens rolled fine, just slow and heavily watered which is common for most courses this time of year. Let’s put it this way, I’ve played on better and worse!

As usual, I’m always happy to play a course once! However, I wouldn’t go that far out of my way to play here unless you are a true course junkie like me. The design shows no mercy and I didn’t think it was all that interesting. There is foot golf available and I saw a family heading out as we were finishing up, so that might be worth checking out!

#1 (370 yard par 4):