I have 3 regular golfing buddies. You wouldn’t want to know what we call ourselves. It’s not very flattering. To give you an idea, the second of the two descriptive words is “holes.” But we enjoy playing together and giving each other a hard time – which is what golf, to me, is really all about.
Last week, my fellow hole-mates and I decided to revisit the Royal Virginian Golf Course in Louisa. They say it’s Louisa but it’s not. It’s out in the boon docks near Hadensville, off I-64. The GPS address is 3016 Royal Virginia Parkway. Greg and I used his GPS and still got lost. Fortunately, our other two hole-mates somehow found it and guided us in.
The 18-hole course at The Royal Virginian Golf Club plays at 7,104 yards of golf from the back tees to a par of 72. The course rating is 74.1 with a slope rating of 131. Designed by Algie M. Pulley, Jr., ASGCA, the Royal Virginian golf course opened in 1993. The course has twice hosted the Virginia Sate Open.
I agreed to play Royal Virginian again if – and only if – we could play from the forward-most tees. That meant I – as a senior – would play from the red tees while my comrades moved up to the gold tees. Even so, it was a wet day with not much roll from our drives, and it was very difficult to reach many of the par 4s in two. It’s a long course. The red tees play at 5,386 and the gold tees are at 5,980. On a soggy fairway, that’s a lot of yardage.
The course, however, was in excellent shape with lush fairways and terrific greens. The tee boxes were not as large or flat as I would like, but that’s my only complaint.
To play this course well, you need to know the greens and where to be – assuming you’re good enough to put your ball where it needs to be. The greens are tough, very fast in some places, depending on the grain and the lie. But Royal Virginian is a nice alternative for folks in Central Virginia. It’s about 40 minutes from Charlottesville (if you don’t get lost). They say they take VSGA cards, but they still charged us $35 on a weekday afternoon. Who knows? If you play Royal Virginian and can’t hit it like Dustin Johnson, play from the forward tees and you’ll have more fun.
Call 804-457-2041 for a tee time.