Longest Hole: Better Pack Lunch For 841-Yard Par-6

LOCUST GROVE, Va. - The longest golf hole in America has two lakes, four tees, a sand trap shaped like a three-leaf clover and a green roughly the size of Utah.

To call the No. 12 hole at the Meadows Farms Golf Course long would be like calling the Empire State Building tall.

This preposterous piece of golf real estate stretches from a stand of pines, doglegs to the right down a hill, and rambles across what was once a rolling field filled with cattle.

It is 841 yards.

Par is 6.

The only thing missing is a bus stop.

"It is a monster," said Steve Cooper, a local golfer who sounded a warning to a coming foursome. "Better pack a lunch."

Who would plan for such a hole in such a place, an hour south of Washington, D.C.?

It would take someone like Bill "Farmer" Meadows, a laid-back 59-year-old West Virginia native and Washington D.C.-area entrepreneur, whose voice drips country but whose tastes are definitely big-city.

He drives a Mercedes, lives in a 13,000-square-foot house with 21 television sets and a 100-foot-long game room, and owns a $22 million-a-year landscaping and nursery business. And he sort of likes golf.

Two years ago, Farmer - nobody calls him Mr. Meadows - decided to turn 300 acres of a cattle farm he owned into a course. He then hired a West Virginia-based architect, Bill Ward Jr., purchased $3,000 worth of golf books and magazines, and trolled for ideas.

With the help of Ward, he transformed his cattle farm into a golf theme park. It features:

-- Nineteen holes, the first one for practice.

-- An island green.

-- Bounce bunkers, which are strips of pressure-treated wood placed just above a couple of sand traps. Ridiculous? Of course. Fun to play? Definitely, because a bad shot can get even wackier when the ball hits and bounces who knows where.

The only thing missing is a windmill in front of a cup. Total price tag: $2 million.

It was Ward who came up with the idea of building a long hole. And it was Farmer who insisted it had to be the longest. There was no way they could grow a hole any longer than the 948-yard, par-7 record holder at the Koolan Island Golf Course in Western Australia.

So they settled for the American record.

If Farmer has his way, the hole may even grow a little longer. There's this house just behind the tee and it's up for sale, you see.

"After we finished up, we realized that we were just a few yards short of half a mile," he said. "I don't know if I'm going to buy that house back there. They want $60,000. And then you'd have to tear it down. And put in another tee. I just don't know. But . . . "