Megunticook Golf Club

Camden sits where the Camden Hills meet Penobscot Bay, one of the more dramatically beautiful corners of the Maine coast. The town itself is a classic New England sailing and summer colony, the kind of place where the light off the water in late afternoon stops you mid-sentence. Golf here has always been part of the summer fabric, a companion activity to sailing and hiking rather than the main event.

Megunticook Golf Club takes its name from the lake that lies just inland from the village — and from the mountain above it — both of which define this particular pocket of midcoast Maine. At par 68, the course plays shorter than a regulation layout, which suits a membership that comes here for the pleasure of the round rather than the grind of a championship test. That compact par figure almost certainly reflects a design built around the land as it was found, working with the rocky, rolling Maine terrain rather than against it.

This is the kind of club where the game is unhurried, the scenery does real work, and the experience is inseparable from the place that surrounds it.