Olde Stonewall Golf Club, Ellwood City, Pennsylvania - A Tourist-Like Attraction and One of the Top Golf Courses in the Country

For new players who see the soaring castle, knights in armor and moats at Olde Stonewall Golf Club, they might readily conclude they'd found a Disney tourist attraction, rather than a top-flight golf course. Thanks to the design work of Michael Hurdzan and Dana Fry, however, Old Stonewall is considered a great golf course, from its Bent grass tee boxes and fairways, to its fast, Bent grass greens.

The course, which opened in 1999, is relatively isolated and is very much like a walk through the rural low-country of Pennsylvania, especially on the front nine. The back nine, however, features significant elevation changes that take the routing even higher than the top of the castle-style clubhouse. Holes No. 11-16, in particular, provide some great views of surrounding Lawrence Country, and some dramatic uphill and downhill shots.

The 18-hole, par-70 layout plays to 7,052 yards from the longest "Epic'' tees and features a good deal of movement throughout the layout. The green complexes, in particular, offer a lot of movement in the form of hollows, swales, and deep, grass-topped bunkers. The greens are also well-contoured and fast, and often slope away to collection areas, as well as bunkers and water hazards, making short-game play a highly valued commodity on this course.

Another striking feature of the course is its use of rocks and boulders - 600 million pounds of them, give or take - which were transported from the nearby quarry and positioned throughout the layout. The course also features a good variety in its holes, with downhill tee shots, uphill approach shots, reachable par-5s, some daunting par-3s, as well as a mixture of long par-4s and drivable ones.

In keeping with the castle motif, players will also encounter a castle snack bar at the turn, a castle-style maintenance building, a knight in shining armor, bronze animal statues scattered along the rolling, wooded track, a moat, and 12-foot-tall doors that weigh 800 pounds each.

Since its opening, Olde Stonewall has received its share of acclaim. At one time, GOLF Magazine had the course ranked among the Top 10 Public Golf Courses in the U.S., and Golf Digest has it ranked among the Top 50 Public Golf Courses in the country.

As mentioned the course features a clubhouse that is a soaring castle, which is home to a Golf Shoppe and Shakespeare's Restaurant.