Most larger cities have a municipal golf course or two, but few have one to rival the quality of Meadowcreek Golf Course here in Charlottesville. My golf amigos and I teed it up there last week and had a great round. The best part? We played in less than 3 ½ hours – didn’t have to wait a single minute for any dawdling foursomes ahead – and that’s been a real problem of late.
Golf courses are simply going to have to monitor the rate of play if the future if golf – as we know it – is to survive. In addition to the expense, golf is very time-consuming. If a round takes 5 hours or more, and travel is an hour or so, that’s practically an entire day. Many people can’t spare an entire day for a pastime that should and could take just a few hours.
But municipal or otherwise, Meadowcreek is a fun course and plays quickly.
Golf Pro and Director Rion Summers has cleared out lots of obstacles – such as unnecessarily high grass and rough – to speed up play without compromising the game with no wasted time poking around for errant balls. Meadowcreek is not overpowering, the greens and fairways are historically in great condition and the tee boxes are large, well seeded and flat. It’s a demanding course from the Championship Tees, where the scratch players tee it up, but from the white and gold tees, the par 4s are all reachable with a couple of crisp shops. Meadowcreek is also a reasonable course, price-wise. We used our VSGA cards and played for $30 each with a cart.
By the way, the Two Sides Grill at Meadowcreek has the best golf food in Central Virginia – hands down
Meadowcreek Golf course is located at 1400 Pen Park Road – in the heart of Charlottesville, easily reachable from any direction.
Call 434-977-0615 for tee times or go to www.meadowcreekgolf.org for more information.