Massanutten Resort

This is a pretty little course that plays along the lower mountain ridge and valley. It's quite hilly (no surprise) and VERY narrow. It's a fun layout with a lot of variety.

The course isn't super-cheap if paying as a regular guest - considering the conditions. It gets cheaper if you're doing multiple activities and get an activities pass. And it would be worth it if they'd put a few $$ into it and fix up some maintenance issues (detailed below).

For one, the bunkers aren't good. At best they have lots of sand mixed with small pebbles. At worst they are totally GUR. They all pretty much need to be re-lined and re-filled with good quality sand.

The other problem are the edges of the fairways. Being on the side/bottom of a small mountain, I can understand the challenge of channeling water through the course. But I've seen it done on many similar courses. The lack of water runoff management means there are lots of areas on the mountain side of the fairways that are difficult to maintain. Many areas are too wet to mow and there are little shelves and such that create unplayable conditions for tee shots that miss the fairway by a yard on the smart side of the hole. The tee boxes could also use some work.

All that said, I thought the greens were pretty good. They're a bit tricky as many of them are tilted towards the mountain so putts counter-intuitively break towards it. They were a decent speed and rolled well.

All-in-all a low average play with room for improvement. A happy shout out to the pro shop staff for getting me out on the back 9 so I could get a quick 9 holes in and get back to the family without waiting behind the morning rush. Kudos to them!

Course was in ok shape. There had been a lot of rain and a cool spring so it wasn't grown in properly. Certainly not the fault of the course. This course is tight and difficult. Need your straight game or you will loose. Lot of golf balls. Very scenic. The first hole is a killer!

The Meadows course is a par 65 with 9 par 3s, none of which I would call easy. Some are tight, some are well bunkered. Wide fairways but still challenging. Fun for beginners to average. There's the rub. Foot prints in the bunkers, ball marks on the greens, and a below average pace of play.

The Mountain Greens, a par 72, is beautiful visually and much more of a challenge. You can not pull your driver on the tee of every par four. It is a target course. Local knowledge is useful. As an example, the first hole is a blind shot for men, and if you hit it between 200 and 300 yards and hit the fairway, you've lost a ball. It's that 125 slope and gravity working together.

This is the championship course at Massanutten Resort and it will challenged even the most seasoned golfer. I have played this course a few times over the year and the one thing I have learned is that playing on the side of a mountain is fun and frustrating. The course is tight and extremely sloped with elevation changes and multi-tiered greens that are influenced by the mountain itself. The more times I play the course the better I understand that it is not about how you hit the ball but where you hit it, with woods and rocks just off the fairway you need to place all your tee and approach shots with accuracy in distance and direction. The first time I played this course I lost a bagful of balls just because of fairway and green slopes and lack of course knowledge. But, no matter how bad I have played all you have to do is look around and see why mountain golf is a thing of beauty just not a thing you want to do weekly.

Played this course a few times over the years it is a shorter executive course but not a Par 3 with a friendly staff. Nice to have a driving range to warm up on before you go out but need to have grass tees instead of carpet mats for hitting irons. The course offers a variety of short holes mixed with some tight and challenging holes. The fairways and greens are in decent condition, however, the greens are on the slower side. Pace of play is slower then the Mountain course we played but also had a lot more people playing it. Great course for people that want a relaxing round of golf without the stress of a championship course.

If a deer or groundhog in the fairway will bother your tee shot, you might want to avoid this course. This a beautiful and challenging course. Many fairways are narrow requiring an accurate tee shot. You can hit your second shot to the flag on most greens without worrying about losing it off the backside. This course requires accuracy with all clubs, but is well worth the challenge. It had rained the morning before I played and the course was holding water limiting us to "cart path only"; however it was narrow enough that the walking was not extreme.