Augustine Golf Club is a public course in Stafford, Virginia, designed by Rick Jacobson on land once owned by Augustine Washington, father of the first president, featuring emerald fairways carved through rolling hills and hardwood forest with demanding green complexes that reward course management. Billed as "the public's country club," Augustine has held its place as one of northern Virginia's leading public-access courses since opening in 1995.
History
Augustine Golf Club in Stafford, Virginia opened in 1995 on land with a verifiable connection to one of American history's most significant figures: the property was once owned by Augustine Washington, father of George Washington. Rick Jacobson — a landscape architect by training and former design associate of Jack Nicklaus who had established his own firm, Jacobson Golf Course Design, Inc., in Libertyville, Illinois in November 1991 — designed the course on the gentle rolling hills of Stafford County, creating a layout that received immediate recognition as one of the Washington D.C. area's most accomplished daily-fee courses. Jacobson earned his landscape architecture degree at the University of Wisconsin and gained early construction experience at Packard, Inc. in Chicago and Wadsworth Golf Construction Company before joining Jack Nicklaus Golf Services in July 1985 as an Assistant Designer. He advanced to Design Associate during six years with the Nicklaus organization, working on prominent projects in both the United States and Asia, before striking out independently in late 1991.
Augustine Golf Club was his firm's first major solo commission, and it delivered immediate results: Golf Digest named Augustine one of the best new upscale courses of 1996, affirming Jacobson's ability to operate independently from the Nicklaus organization that had defined his formative years. Jacobson's design philosophy, influenced by but distinct from Nicklaus's characteristically demanding approach, prioritizes playability alongside challenge — the goal being to make courses a genuinely fun experience for golfers across the skill spectrum. The 6,817-yard par-71 layout threads through a mature hardwood forest, with corridors of white oak, Virginia pine, and hickory framing the fairways and creating the parkland atmosphere that characterizes the Northern Virginia region's best golf. The course's opening hole presents a split fairway separated by wetlands, immediately establishing the risk-reward logic that runs throughout the routing.
The par-three 6th, at 195 yards, requires a long carry over water and ranks as the course's most demanding short hole. The par-five 18th, at 501 yards, features six bunkers but no water, offering a strategic risk-reward closing hole without the penal quality of some finishing designs. Augustine Golf Club was credited in its early years with helping initiate the upscale daily-fee construction boom in the Washington D.C. area during the 1990s, a decade when demand for quality public-access golf was outpacing available supply. By the late 2000s, the course had deteriorated significantly through underinvestment: fairways became thin, maintenance standards fell, and designer Jacobson himself noted that "the course really started to lose the integrity of the original design." In March 2010, Raspberry Golf Management — which had previously revitalized Bull Run Golf Club in Haymarket, growing rounds from 17,000 in 2009 to 32,000 in 2011 — acquired and closed Augustine for extensive renovation.
The work involved comprehensive irrigation and drainage improvements, removal of approximately 1,000 trees, and complete rebuilding of greens and bunkers, with Bermuda grass added to the playing surfaces. The course reopened in April 2012, with the enlarged fairways and rebuilt greens restoring the playing quality that had made Augustine's opening years so well received. The renovation preserved Jacobson's original routing while improving the infrastructure that had failed during the intervening years, and the course has maintained consistent standards since its reopening.