Black Mountain is home to a par-6 that stretches 747 yards, and for decades the town celebrated it as the world’s longest golf hole. It sits as the 17th hole at Black Mountain Golf Course, a public, town-owned track east of Asheville. It accounts for roughly 12 percent of the course’s total yardage, a ratio GolfPass flagged when it placed the hole seventh on its 2025 list of the ten longest holes in the country.

The front nine at Black Mountain is a Donald Ross design from 1929. The back nine that houses the famed 17th hole carries no single architect’s name, credited instead to local officials and surveyors as a municipal project. Per a history written for The Valley Echo by Wendell Begley — whose father, Marcus Begley, sat on the town board — ground broke in 1962 and the finished holes were dedicated May 15, 1964. The land came from two adjacent estates and the town auctioned ten bordering home sites it owned to cover construction; taxpayers paid little to nothing.

Billy Graham, the world-famous evangelist who called neighboring Montreat home, worked alongside the town board to bring landowners and town together, appearing in photographs at both the groundbreaking and dedication. Begley says his father credited Graham’s patient role in the sale, though the deal was ultimately the town’s to close.

An Asheville Citizen-Times preview in early 1964 had club pro Ross Taylor hoping to open the new back nine by May Day. The dedication came a little later, with Mayor Richard E. Stone presiding and Graham as guest of honor, playing a few holes alongside associate Dr. T. W. Wilson, Asheville amateur Gene Ochsenreiter, and Taylor, per dedication-day coverage.

When it opened, the 17th stretched to 745 yards — a six-shot affair long enough to outdo the par-5 16th at nearby Beaver Lake (now the Country Club of Asheville course) and claim the title of longest hole in the world, which it held for decades. Today the 17th is listed at 747 yards, and longer holes elsewhere have since surpassed it: GolfPass now ranks an 888-yard 9th at The Links Golf Club in Idaho atop its U.S. list, followed by the 841-yard 12th at Meadows Farms in Virginia. Even so, the elongated par-6 at Black Mountain remains the only WNC hole in the top ten.

The reputation isn’t just based on length. The Asheville Times nicknamed it The Monster when it opened: A stream shadows the entire left fairway, a double dogleg down the hill forces two decisions instead of one, and the green originally sat close enough to a small church that the write-up joked a golfer might need sanctuary by the time they got there. LINKS Magazine notes the fairway pitches hard right to left with dense woods on the right. Strategy is important off the tee to position the second shot; many players opt for a 3-wood or hybrid in lieu of a driver. A big hitter might get home in three, but a late dogleg right makes that a low-percentage gamble. The course website promotes par as being a good score — with birdie being an achievement worth celebrating.

One honest caveat: Hurricane Helene damaged Black Mountain badly in September 2024. The back nine — holes 10 through 18, where the 17th lives — is open, but the Ross front nine remains closed while cart path and bridge repairs clear permitting and the old maintenance building is demolished. The 17th is playable, but many of the greens are still recovering; call ahead before making the drive.

Before the Black Mountain Golf Course ever opened, another course was taking shape in nearby Montreat. It never celebrated a first birthday.

The Mountain Retreat Association — the organization that has run the Montreat conference grounds since the 1890s and is known today as the Montreat Conference Center — approved a plan for golf links in August 1915 that was championed by Robert C. Anderson, association president from 1911 to 1947. Oddly, the golf course goes unmentioned in his annual reports from those years, even as the reports otherwise tracked building projects, utilities, and finances in detail.

By summer 1916, five fairways had been cleared and three greens built, per research by Nancy Smith Midgette of the Presbyterian Heritage Center at Montreat. Anderson later described the project in a 1949 memoir, writing that lots in the lower grounds had become a playground and athletic field, with a golf course built to proper links specifications. A flood on Flat Creek in July 1916 tore through both banks and destroyed the unfinished course.

Association minutes from late August 1916 called a meeting of Montreat’s golf enthusiasts that month to discuss finishing what the flood had wrecked. Midgette cannot confirm the meeting happened, and guesses Anderson sought donations and came up empty; the lost Montreat course was never rebuilt.

Multiple accounts, including the Town of Montreat’s own history feature, agree that reviving the links stopped mattering once Asheville began developing plans for a municipal course — though that course did not open until 1927, more than a decade later.

Montreat did eventually get a golf course, just not the kind where you’d need a full set of clubs. A 1930 gift funded a miniature golf course near Assembly Inn, built for $1,250 per that year’s association annual report. Like most miniature courses of the era, the tiny links integrated winding pathways, natural grading, and simple architectural obstacles. A photograph of it appears in a 1932 advertising brochure, listed among the resort’s offerings with no further detail. Midgette, who remembers playing it herself in the late 1950s, suspects it disappeared in the early 1960s when Convocation Hall went up and the inn’s driveway was extended, though it may have fallen into disrepair even earlier. The equipment building from that era still stands beside the Convocation Hall steps.

Special thanks to Nancy Smith Midgette, research historian at the Presbyterian Heritage Center, whose research made the Montreat history in this article possible.