Nestled in at the foot of the beautiful Tuscarora Mountain Range, Whitetail Golf Resort is truly the hidden gem of Franklin County fun! The Whitetail Golf Operations is now closed for the 2021 golfing season. We will be reopening at the beginning of March 2022. Looking to play some winter golf?
Whitetail is a beautiful 18 hole championship course that provides a unique golfing experience. Nestled between Mercersburg PA and Clear Spring MD, Whitetail is an hours drive from the beltways and just 45 minutes from Frederick MD. Set up your tee time instantly online to guarantee the lowest price possible!
“A renovation is when we’re interjecting our original design thoughts into an existing golf course, allowing our prejudices, thoughts, skills, etcetera, to influence what we think would make for a better golf course.”
Once closed and left untended for as little as a year, it can cost several million dollars to repair and reopen a course — nature reclaims unmaintained land quickly, and home values can drop as much as 50% within weeks of a course closing.
The ninth hole at Winged Foot Golf Club’s West Course in New York, which was restored by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner before the 2020 U.S. Open (Copyright USGA/Russell Kirk)
The early 20th century has been dubbed by many to be the golden age of course design in the United States, as 94 of the top 100 layouts on Golfweek’s Best Classic Courses list were built in the four decades through the 1930s as cars proliferated and airplanes took off. The 1990s and early 2000s also were boom times, but nothing compared to that previous stretch in which famed designers – artists, really – produced so many masterpieces.
Hanse pointed to his and Wagner’s work at Winged Foot’s West course in New York as a restoration , with the duo trying to reclaim the characteristics instilled by the original designer, Tillinghast. Greens edges had crept in since the course opened in 1923, leaving fewer hole locations. Some bunkers had become irrelevant.
Often cited as among the best of Ross’s designs, No. 2 had changed considerably over the decades following its 1903 opening. The course’s most famous features are its crowned greens, but much of the rest of the course might have been almost unrecognizable to Ross, who lived for years to the side of the third green. Most dramatically, the native sandy areas alongside fairways had been replaced with grass at rough heights, presenting totally different appearances and playing challenges.
The second hole at Pinehurst No. 4, which was renovated by Gil Hanse and Jim Wagner (Courtesy of Pinehurst Resort)
Bill Coore – who with design partner Ben Crenshaw has worked on classics such as Pinehurst No. 2, Maidstone, Seminole, Riviera and many others – agrees.
It’s all a great opportunity for current architects, but it can be very different than creating a new course. In a sense, great restorations are more of a research endeavor than a design process.
As a result, Whitetail Club saw its golf course become massively popular with residents. “Golf in the summertime is a very important amenity for us,” Mr. Garcia said. “During the last season, we saw a 30% increase in play over any previous year.
Alternatively, Whitetail Club works with a small, select team of gifted and experienced architects to collaborate with incoming residents.
Access Whitetail Golf Resort and Carroll Valley Golf Course for all of the 2021 season for only $1199 with the NEW Keystone State Golf Season Pass. Carts included!
Whitetail Golf Resort is open and ready to welcome our guests to hit the links once again. Book your tee times now and enjoy your late Summer swings!
This allowed for more homes to benefit from course frontage and the elevated premiums that came along. These courses drove the absorption and pricing of many real estate developments, and even non-golfers purchased these properties because of the perceived value — but without understanding the full cost of ownership in a golf-based community. Many of these buyers and those who came after the market correction had no idea of the value risk of buying into a community that was not supporting its golf club. Essentially, property values were being subsidized by the golfers and club members supporting the club.
This was predicted by Bob Turner of Beaufort, South Carolina in his paper, Sustainability Through Design, where he pointed out that spreading too many amenities over too few paying homeowners would create an unsustainable burden. Real estate developers knew that they were in the business of building, not operating, golf courses, so they sold or gave away their interest (and liability) in the clubs. Often developers sold shortly after closing all the homes in a community and moving onto another location and another new course.