Cameron Hills Golf Links Inc

I usually eat up these Groupon deals for golf. With this past weekend being what I fear is the turn from fall weather to miserable cold weather, I headed out on the 90 minute drive to Cameron Hills to use it on a Friday morning. The golf course really is out in the middle of nowhere, which I enjoyed. The drive from Fredericksburg to Cameron Hills was beautiful, mostly on country roads. The clubhouse attendant seemed to be in a foul mood, and took my Groupon with nary a smile on her face. She sent me on my way, pointing me to the 1^st tee. The gas carts have seen better days and struggled to climb the steep hill up to the tee. I played the 1^st tee with no delay, but after that, I hit the logjam of foursomes of 60 year olds. I could play through one, but I’d still be behind another 10 foursomes. The pace of play on this course is horrendous — to the point that I played 9 and called it quits. I was looking at a 5 – 6 hour round when I was expecting I could get a round in in under 3. There is no starter, there is no marshall, there is pretty much no one to ensure the pace of play is fast (or even less than awful). The course itself is in pretty good shape, with the greens specifically being in exception shape (if not a bit slow). The hole designs are interesting, although hole 1 includes a golf course design pet peeve, which is sticking a big tree in the middle of the fairway to punish players with accurate drives down the middle of the fairway.
While the course itself is nice, its regular rates are high for a course this far from civilization. A 90 minute drive will take me into the Shenandoah Valley where I can play a host of well kept and inexpensive courses.

Used a Groupon here last weekend for unlimited golf. Let me repeat: UNLIMITED GOLF. You’ve got to love a place that participates in and honors such a ridiculous deal. And the staff in the clubhouse didn’t make me feel like a cheap-​o either. To them, I was just another regular price paying Joe that drove over an hour to golf at their beautiful establishment, which I appreciate.
But that’s pretty much where the appreciation stops. Upon arrival at the first teebox precisely at our 9am tee time, there were already people there waiting to tee off, as well as another twosome immediately in front of us waiting. We sat there for almost half an hour before finally getting to hit. The starter wasn’t announcing or controlling anything and really had no idea what was going on. But what made it worse, was also the fact that all we saw the entire day were twosomes. No matter how well you play, a foursome just cannot keep pace ahead of a twosome. So all day we were being pushed, which got real old, real fast. As a golf courtesy, you can’t hold anyone up, so we were forced to stop and let them play through multiple times. This ended up delaying our own round quite a bit longer than it really should have. A proper scheduler/​starter should have realized that you do not put so many twos behind a four because it causes multiple problems, all of which could have been avoided if you pair up.
The course is nice, manicured decently, and I really liked the design. But for the long drive out there and poorly managed course, I don’t think I’ll return. The only thing that saved the experience, was the fact that it was a screamin’ deal (which was really only a result of Groupon)