Forest Park Country Club

Adams sits in the northern Berkshires, hemmed in by the Hoosac Range and the shadow of Mount Greylock — Massachusetts' highest peak — and the landscape lends this members' club a decidedly rugged, mountain character you won't find at the gentler resort layouts further south in the county. The Berkshires have a long tradition of workaday golf clubs serving tight-knit communities, and Forest Park fits that mold: a private retreat for locals rather than a destination property chasing rankings or publicity.

A par of 68 tells you something important before you ever set foot on the first tee. This is a course built around precision and local knowledge rather than length — the kind of layout where short par 4s demand more thought than brute force, and where members develop a fluency with the land that visiting players simply can't fake in a single round.

The northern Berkshires are honest New England golf country: cool summers, brilliant autumns, and terrain that was never going to be flattened into anything conventional. Forest Park almost certainly embraces that rather than fighting it.