The Tree Farm

At The Tree Farm, PGA Tour player and founder Zac Blair has attracted a kindred young-in-spirit if not exclusively young-in-age membership from across the country that mirrors his relaxed-casual passion for walking, fast play, head-to-head matches and creative architecture, particularly from the approach shot through the green. A majority of them are good players who think nothing of hoofing 36 or more holes a day.

Design credit goes to multiple people, including Tom Doak, who routed the course over a gorgeously secluded site full of ridges, valleys and galleries of pine accented with scrub, sand and shades of underbrush, parts Pinehurst area and vintage Augusta National; and Kye Goalby and Blair, who designed the holes and features. Most of Blair's and Goalby’s fairways merely brush the land with a minimum of earthwork, draped around the curves of bunkers and ravines that tempt players to try and nip the corners. Highlights include a wonderful Redan par 3, a memorable punchbowl green at the par-5 16th, a mighty uphill par 3 (the fourth) modeled on the fifth at Pine Valley and some other subtle nods to template holes, but overall the architecture at The Tree Farm is organic and inspired primarily by what was already there, giving the course a budding air of sophisticated maturity.

Some of the subtlest sections of the course, like the loop through a soothing cove of pines at five, six and seven, may be The Tree Farm’s most evocative, a resplendent sotto voce to the explosive aria of the final four holes that includes the Redan, a reachable par 5 with a corner-cut drive and deep punchbowl green, a short archery target par 3 and a downhill drivable par 4 with a split-level green similar to the 16th at Augusta National.