The Schoolhouse Nine

Loved this course for the experience alone!! I was able to play the original par 3 short course as well as make my own holes as a result of the early season round!

Great views, great conditions, great presentation and great round!!

Exactly what you’d expect from a Par 3, super causal set up overall (you checkin at the pub, no required golf attire). Great little course to work on your irons and short play. Course is surprisingly well kept for a par 3. Not great, but again, Par3 courses are really just for fine tuning and practicing; basically glorified driving ranges. But for $10-15 you cannot beat this price! Only negative is the whole course is a cellular dead zone, absolutely no service. But who wants to be bothered when golfing anyways?! Highly recommended, worth every penny. A go-to spot for me.

I had heard from multiple people who don’t even live in Virginia about this course in the past several months which I found particularly odd since I lived less than an hour away from it for years and never knew it even existed. Part of that reason is the fact that it’s a par-3 9-hole course, and part of it is the fact it’s located a half hour from any city anyone has heard of. But if you find yourself looking for something completely different, or if you are traveling with non-golfers (i.e. your family), this is a great destination for everyone.

The reason for this is that Schoolhouse Nine is only partially about the actual golf course. Forget a clubhouse, there’s not even a pro shop. Where do you check in for golf? At the bar in the pub, naturally. Sounds like a place that’s not family-friendly though, doesn’t it? Not so, because in the room adjacent to the bar is a rec room complete with pool tables, ping pong, old-school arcade games, and even a single small-ball bowling lane. There are also shops, antique stores, and nature trails within walking distance. There’s plenty for the whole family to do for even a full two hours if you want to play a “full” 18 holes.

For $15/$20 you get to walk the 9-hole course (no motorized carts, but they do provide big, 2-wheeled pull carts for free) that has a unique setting: the middle of a random field with the beautiful backdrop of the Blue Ridge Mountains. This course pride's itself on its minimalist design and environmentally friendly approach. No fertilizers or pesticides are used here, and almost no construction or irrigation is used other than to create and maintain the 9 beautiful looking greens. And after all, on a par-3 course, the greens are all you really care about.

You’ll want to take a paper scorecard with you since the entire town is in a cell network dead zone, but that just adds to the retro feel of the whole place as if you drove there in a time machine. Also, bring some bug spray. It turns out an open field next to a babbling brook is prime real estate for those pesky flies.

The only complaint about the course itself is that the tee boxes (one per hole) are simply mowed areas of the field and they aren’t mowed nearly as low as most any other course so if you don’t tee it up a good bit, it’s like hitting it out of the first cut of rough.

The greens have a ton of tiering going on which I think adds a much-needed level of dynamics to the course and make it worth coming back to learn them and play better. A mid-handicapper like me can score darn near even par here with a little practice and extra knowledge of the greens.

In the end, it’s not about the course itself that makes the drive out here worth it. It’s the super friendly staff/bartenders, the rustic, rural Virginia environment, and the getaway isolation of having no cellular interruptions that makes Schoolhouse Nine so unique (there is free wi-fi, just don’t tell the kids).