Beacon Ridge Golf & Country Club, West End, NC

Wonderful day of golf!!! My wife and I have played several dozen courses in Sand Hills area over the years and have over looked this gem. Played for the first time and were pleasantly surprised with the course. Great value, pleasant staff and exceptional course. From the tees to the greens, the course was in wonderful shape. An average distance course from white tees, but just enough traps in well placed distances to make the course challenging but enjoyable. Fareways rewarded good tee shots. You have to be accurate with your approach shots with sand traps around the greens. But greens held good shots in and reads were straight forward when putting. Pace of the round was better than average even with a tournement ongoing. We even paired up midway through the back 9 with a wonderful gentlemen who rescently retired in the area from upstate New York and had a great conversation to close out the round.
.The only ding were the cart paths. A bit primitive in a few area. Otherwise a wonderful course. We will definitely return.

I would really like to have given Beacon Ridge a higher rating than the 3 stars I alloted them, but we encountered alot of unpleasant surprises during our play on 02/22/11. I guess it made little difference though, considering we were the only ones on the course other than a ladies league tournament that they were about to let out (unpleasant surprise #1). We were then advised that we would have to play the front 9 twice, due to aerating on the back 9 (disappointment #2). When we asked why we hadn't been advised of this PRIOR to booking our tee time through Golfnow.com, we were told that they emailed Golfnow.com immediately upon receiving our tee time confirmation to advise them of the aeration schedule, and that we'd need to take it up with them. We didn't press the issue any further, but talked among ourselves a bit and agreed that in light of the fact that we had only booked our round only 5 days earlier, the course HAD to have known that they had an upcoming aeration and partial course closure and should have notified Golfnow.com much earlier then AFTER someone booked a tee time. We then hurried up to the first tee and encountered disappointment #3. The fairways were not overseeded (as you would expect from a high end course). This final rub really put a damper on the day, and made the course hard to enjoy. I WILL say that they have some BEAUTIFULLY designed holes on the front 9 and I'm sure the back 9 does too, but sadly, we'll likely never see them. Alot of this could have been avoided with better communication on the front end, or even a little price break on the back end, but what's done is done....