# Asheboro Country Club vs. Tot Hill Farm Golf Club: The Asheboro Choice

Source: https://thecourserankings.com/blog/asheboro-country-club-vs-tot-hill-farm-golf-club/

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Course Comparisons / North Carolina


A golf ball beside the hole on a green. Photo: PattayaPatrol, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Asheboro, North Carolina, population small, golf argument outsized. On one side of town, a nine-hole country club from 1960 set around a spring-fed lake in the Caraway Mountains. On the other, a Mike Strantz course its own architect called the best he had ever built, by far. Strantz did not hand out compliments like that, and he did not build tame golf courses. Asheboro Country Club against Tot Hill Farm is the quiet local institution against the wild public landmark, and it is one of the more lopsided choices in this series, with one honest twist at the end.

## Asheboro Country Club

Asheboro Country Club was designed by Jim Bivins and opened in 1960 as a nine-hole private club. The setting does the heavy lifting: the Caraway Mountains, a 22-acre spring-fed lake, and water in play on most of the back nine, which on a nine-hole course means the water holes come around twice in an 18-hole round and shape your whole day. The listed card reads par 71 at 6,473 yards for the full round, and the par 4 18th runs over 400 yards with water up the entire right side. A finishing hole with water the whole way home is a serious closer for a small-city club, and members who have played it for decades will tell you exactly where rounds die on that hole.

The club's recent history is part of its profile, told plainly. It went through a Chapter 11 sale in 2019 and has since reopened under new ownership as a semi-private course. That reopening matters for this comparison, because it changed the access math. The club that was members only is now a course visitors can ask about playing, and a small club that survived a bankruptcy sale and kept its lake and its closing hole intact deserves credit for continuity under pressure.

## Tot Hill Farm Golf Club

Tot Hill Farm is Mike Strantz's rugged farm and rock terrain made into golf, opened in 2000, public, and unlike anything else in Randolph County. Strantz called it the best course he had ever built, by far. It was his second-to-last solo design and his final public course, which gives Tot Hill a weight in his short, brilliant career that no marketing department invented. The shape of the card is pure Strantz mischief: an unconventional par 72 with five par 3s and five par 5s, over 250 feet of elevation change, and a slope of 144 from the back Maverick tees. A 144 slope on a public course in Asheboro. That number should not exist, and it does.

The restoration chapter sealed its standing. After years of decline, a 2022 sale led to a restoration from Strantz's original drawings, reopening on Labor Day 2023 with greens regrassed to Prizm Zoysia and more than 1,200 trees removed. Restoring from the architect's own drawings is the gold standard, and removing 1,200 trees is what restoring original playing corridors actually looks like in practice. The Tot Hill Farm a visitor plays now is much closer to the course Strantz judged his best than the overgrown version of a decade ago.

## The comparison, honestly

On the golf, Tot Hill Farm wins decisively. A singular design by a singular architect, at his own stated peak, freshly restored to his drawings, against a pleasant nine-hole club course is not a fair fight, and this page will not pretend it is one. Concede Asheboro Country Club its best points anyway, because they are real: a beautiful lake setting in the Caraways, water threaded through the back nine, a genuinely testing 18th, and semi-private access since its reopening. For a local choosing a home club, those points plus community and repetition may matter more than architectural fame. A home course is played two hundred times, not once, and the course that wins a visit does not always win a membership.

On the day, Tot Hill is an expedition: elevation, rock, five par 5s asking questions, and the feeling that the land barely agreed to be a golf course. Asheboro's day is calmer, a lake, a short card, a quicker round. On access and value, Tot Hill is public and bookable by anyone, which settles the visitor's question immediately, while Asheboro's semi-private status since 2019 at least opens a door that used to be closed.

## The verdict

Tot Hill Farm wins this comparison, for visitors and for golfers choosing one round in Asheboro, and the margin is wide. It is the course people drive across North Carolina to play, on purpose, and its restored state makes now the right time to go. The state context in [our North Carolina state ranking](/blog/the-5-best-golf-courses-in-north-carolina/) shows Strantz's name appearing where Asheboro Country Club's never will, and that is fine.

Pick Asheboro Country Club anyway if you live there. Membership golf is about the lake at the same hour every week, the 18th with water waiting on the right, and a club that came back from a Chapter 11 sale because its town wanted it back. Tot Hill is the better course. Asheboro might be the better home. Drive to Asheboro for Strantz. Stay for the lake, if you can.

**Reader responses are open.** Please cite a specific hole, a price, or a round you have played.