Meadow Brook

Richmond sits in the Berkshires, that soft-shouldered stretch of western Massachusetts where the hills roll in waves and hardwood forests close in around every clearing. It's dairy-farm country turned second-home country, a region that draws people from Boston and New York who come for Tanglewood, the art museums, and the kind of quiet that's hard to find closer to the coast. Golf here tends to feel unhurried and rooted in the landscape rather than imposed on it.

Meadow Brook, as the name suggests, occupies the kind of terrain the Berkshires do best — open meadow giving way to wooded corridors, with the ground movement and seasonal drainage patterns that come with working farm country. An 18-hole, par-72 layout in this setting almost certainly plays longer in the mind than on paper, as elevation change and prevailing winds off the hills can turn a routine approach into a genuine decision.

This is local golf in the best sense: a place where the regulars know every bounce and the visitor earns their score through feel rather than formula.