Town Rankings / Maryland

The Best Golf Courses in McHenry

McHenry is a small town on the north end of Deep Creek Lake, in Garrett County, about as far from Baltimore as Maryland lets you get while staying in Maryland. The golf sits at 2,400 feet, which changes things you do not expect until you feel them. The air is cooler in July than it has any right to be. The ball hangs a little longer. Summer here is lake houses, boat docks, ski slopes waiting for winter, and two courses at Wisp Resort splitting the local golf between them.

Candor first, because this ranking needs it: McHenry is a two course town, and this is the whole bench. There is no third option hiding down a county road. Deep Creek golf is a reason to bring your clubs on a lake trip, not a reason to make the trip, and any list that padded this out to five entries would be inventing courses that do not exist. What the town does have is a clear top course and a clear supporting act, and the gap between them is the story.

1Lodestone Golf Club

Lodestone is the Hale Irwin design up on Wisp Mountain, and it is the serious golf in McHenry by a wide margin. A name like Irwin's on a mountain routing means a course built around decisions: the mountain gives you elevation, exposure and views whether you want them or not, and the design asks whether you can control a ball when the ground keeps tilting the question. This is championship framed golf in a resort setting, the course in Garrett County that traveling players plan a day around and the one locals point to when they argue Deep Creek deserves a mention in Maryland golf at all.

The altitude is a real part of the test. At 2,400 feet your stock yardages lie to you just enough to matter, and mountain golf punishes the golfer who plays by the number on the card instead of the shot in front of him. Lodestone rewards the player who adapts. It exposes the one who does not, politely, with scenery.

The concession: this is resort golf at resort ambition, and it can play like a special occasion rather than a home course. Rounds are an event, not an afterthought. Some golfers prefer their mountain golf looser than Lodestone asks it to be. For them the course below exists. But a ranking is a ranking, and on architecture, ambition and the quality of the examination, Lodestone stands alone in this town. It is not close, and pretending otherwise to manufacture a debate would be dishonest.

2Fantasy Valley Golf Course at Wisp Resort

Fantasy Valley is the original Wisp course, the resort's everyday golf, and it knows its role. This is the round you play on the morning of a lake day, clubs in the car between the dock and dinner, the round where your brother in law who plays twice a year can have fun without being dismantled by a mountain championship test. It is sociable golf in a beautiful setting, and there is more of that played in America than any other kind.

It finishes second because the comparison is unkind and unavoidable. Sharing a resort with Lodestone means sharing a standard, and Fantasy Valley is the gentler, older, simpler test by design. Its defense is that design intent matters. Judged as a resort amenity, a way to give every guest at Wisp a playable round in the mountains, it does its job well. Judged as a course, against its neighbor, it is second.

The honest summary of McHenry fits in one breath: play Lodestone for the golf, play Fantasy Valley for the trip, and do not confuse the two assignments. Golfers who come to Deep Creek for a week on the water and squeeze in both rounds will leave with a fair picture of mountain Maryland: one course that tests you at altitude, one that lets the lake set the schedule, and cool air over both of them while the rest of the state sweats through summer.