Cliff View Golf Club

Covington sits in the Allegheny Highlands of western Virginia, where the Jackson River cuts through a valley flanked by ridgelines that rise sharply on all sides. It's working-country landscape — honest and unhurried — and the kind of terrain that tends to produce golf courses with genuine elevation change and views that stop you mid-swing.

The name Cliff View suggests exactly the sort of topography you'd expect from this corner of the state: dramatic grade shifts, wooded hillsides, and the possibility of genuine panoramas over the surrounding ridges. Courses built into land like this rarely play the same way twice — uphill approaches feel longer than the card suggests, and the wind that funnels through mountain valleys has a way of making decisions for you.

Covington itself is a small Allegheny community better known for paper mills than fairways, which tends to mean a local golf culture built around unpretentious regulars who know every slope and bounce by heart. If you're passing through on the way to Bath County or the Homestead, this is worth a look.