Golfing
Sugar Mountain Golf Club may be the best kept secret in mountain golf, but not for long. Located just minutes from Boone, Banner Elk and the Blue Ridge Parkway, the 18-hole municipal course is ''Everyman's Golf Course'' in a region home to some of the world's premiere private country club communities. The fabulous golf course opened for play in 1974, the design of Frank Duane, previously the senior project manager for more than two decades for Robert Trent Jones, the undisputed dean of golf course architecture.
The par-64 layout maximizes every view, every mountain brook, and every stand of rhododendron and forest on the 60-acre site. The course features nine par threes, eight par fours, and a single par five. At an elevation of 4,000 feet, the course features immaculate putting surfaces, hailed by those who play here as second to none. Any suggestions that the diminutive creation is anything less than a stellar test, or a grand stage from which to enjoy the drama of mountain golf, are quickly assuaged for the first time visitor.