Whiskey Creek Golf Course

Whiskey Creek is a public championship course in Ijamsville, Maryland, opened in 2000 in the rolling countryside beneath the Catoctin Mountains. It marked the first design collaboration between architect J. Michael Poellot and two-time U.S. Open champion Ernie Els, who served as design consultant. The pair set out to build something as big and bold as the land itself, crafting a strategic par-72 of roughly 7,000 yards where nearly every hole poses a risk-and-reward decision. The property is unusually varied, threading a free-flowing creek through springs, streams, wetlands, stone walls, rock outcroppings, broad meadows and pine forest, with the ridgeline of hardwoods framing long views. A memorable closing stretch and the ruins of an old homestead in play add character. It remains one of the mid-Atlantic's more dramatic and photogenic public tests.