Prestonwood (Meadows)

The Highlands course at Prestonwood Country Club is typically celebrated as the best of the property’s 54 holes, but the Meadows layout is also recognized among the Top 100 courses in North Carolina. The PGA Champions Tour also tips its hat to the route, including a collection of Meadows holes for the back nine during the annual SAS Championship. Tom Jackson, a former associate of Robert Trent Jones, hangs his cap on both courses.

Although the course may take its name from a dryer form of grassland, “marshland” will be more prominent in the player’s mind. No. 8 will require a wetland carry on the way to the green. No. 6 at least makes it strategic to avoid the wetland in order to get the best approach angle into the green. Of course, that will mean wrangling with a bunker along the right side, so pick your poison. Where marsh doesn’t impose, there is plenty of water to go around, albeit not nearly as much as at the Highlands course.

A third course, the Fairways — also designed by Jackson — makes Prestonwood the only 54-hole club in the “Research Triangle.”