Siler City Country Club

Pittsboro, NC · 15 mi away

The Golf Club at Chapel Ridge sits on about 790 acres of rolling countryside in Pittsboro, North Carolina, within a golf course community near Chapel Hill and the Research Triangle. Bob Moore of JMP Golf Design worked with Fred Couples on the course layout, which opened as Pittsboro's first golf course. The 18-hole course plays to a par of 72 and stretches to roughly 7,116 yards from the back tees, laid across rolling hills reminiscent of older traditional American courses. Chapel Ridge is open to the public, with a clubhouse grille, practice range and short-game area, and it offers memberships along with outing and event hosting.

Sanford, NC · 22 mi away

Tobacco Road Golf Club in Sanford, North Carolina, opened in 1998 and is the best-known work of Mike Strantz, who designed only a handful of courses before his death in 2005. The site was an abandoned sand quarry, and Strantz used the spoil piles and pits rather than flattening them. The course is deliberately theatrical. Several tee shots play through narrow gaps between towering sand walls with no view of the landing area, and fairways that look impossibly tight from the tee open up dramatically once golfers walk over the crest. Greens are large, wildly contoured and often set at angles that reward one specific approach line. Strantz routed the holes by hand-drawing them on site, and no two look alike. It is a daily-fee course, walkable, and it plays under 6,600 yards from the back tees, which has almost nothing to do with how hard it is. The Pack House serves as Tobacco Road's clubhouse snack counter, while the clubhouse bar, open fireplace, stone porches and rocking chairs overlooking the 18th green create the post-round setting. It feels more like a rustic gathering place than a polished resort restaurant, which suits the course.

New Hill, NC · 24 mi away

The Preserve at Jordan Lake is a public course in New Hill, southwest of Raleigh, a Davis Love III design. The par-72 layout plays through the pines near Jordan Lake, a scenic and well-conditioned course for the southwest Triangle.