I decide to go conservative, grabbing a 3-iron and taking a few practice swings before teeing up. Scott-Taylor gives me a final bit of friendly advice, pointing over a hill on the left side of the fairway to a landing zone where his ball is resting.
After one last shake of my hips and an exaggerated exhale, I swing and look to the spot Scott-Taylor suggested. My ball isn’t there. Instead, it sits pitifully in the tall grass not 10 yards in front of me.
This isn’t going well.
Wanting to curse, I approach my ball and swing again; another miserable effort. Finally, on my fourth shot out of a patch of rough, I chip my ball up onto the green. As it lands 10 feet from the pin, I look around happily and, for a moment, forget that I’m in Queenstown.
This must be somewhere in the British Isles. I smile.
Though I admit to having loathed the tough-to-master Queen Anne’s County course at first, I’ve fallen for Hunters Oak’s charms. According to Scott-Taylor, I’m not the first.
“I wanted to design a golf course that people feel as if they’d played golf,” he says. “Eighty percent of the people that play Hunters Oak, the first time they play it, they hate it. But something keeps bringing them back.
“When they come back and play it a few more times, they love it.”
Hunters Oak is in Maryland but not of Maryland. The 18-hole, par-72 venue is a classic links course like those Scott-Taylor grew up on in Great Britain and is unlike anything you’ve seen or played on this side of the Atlantic.
PGA Tour professional and CBS Sports analyst Peter Oosterhuis once told Scott-Taylor that anyone who wants to win the British Open should come to Hunters Oak. And after playing the course, golf legend Gary Player said that if you didn’t know you were in Maryland, you’d swear you were in Scotland.
Though it occupies a former cornfield along the banks of the Wye River, Hunters Oak resembles a stretch of Scottish coastline. It follows all the rules its Old World cousins, such as St. Andrews, Turnberry, and Carnoustie, established for a proper links track.
Across the course, Scott-Taylor has paid homage to the legendary courses of the British Isles by recreating some of their elements at Hunters Oak, including on the par-4 fifth hole, which boasts a Carnoustie-esque creek.
Among the first things visitors notice upon arrival at Hunters Oak is how open the place is. Links courses are typically devoid of trees, and this one is no different.
The tight, rolling fairways are comprised of world-class bent grass and lead to wide, welcoming greens. Positioning the ball is paramount here, as views of the green can often be obstructed by a hill.
The bunkers at Hunters Oak resemble the pock marks left by artillery along the Western Front in World War I. They’re deep and steep and would make those harassing golfers across the pond proud.
“It’s not an American golf course that is as flat as a bloody pancake,” Scott-Taylor says. “It’s a golf course that makes you think about where you put the golf ball and how to play the game of golf.”
Scott-Taylor likes to say every golf course architect—himself included—is a liar, a cheat, a thief, and a genius.
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