Sandy Brae at Sandy Brae Golf Course

Sandy Brae Golf Course sits in Clendenin, a small town in Kanawha County in central West Virginia, where the Elk River meets rolling Appalachian terrain. Designed by Ed Ault, a prolific architect who shaped dozens of courses across the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast from the 1960s through the 1990s, the layout reflects his practical approach to mountain and valley golf. Ault typically worked within natural contours to create playable courses that balanced challenge with accessibility for everyday golfers.

The course occupies terrain characteristic of West Virginia golf, where elevation changes and wooded corridors define the playing experience. Routing in this region often moves through hillside clearings and creek valleys, requiring golfers to manage uneven lies and strategic placement over pure length. Ault's designs generally emphasize position off the tee and approach accuracy rather than overwhelming distance demands.

Sandy Brae serves the Clendenin community and surrounding areas as a regional facility, offering golf in a part of the state where courses are less concentrated than in the Charleston metropolitan area to the southwest. The setting provides a wooded, relatively secluded atmosphere typical of smaller West Virginia courses, where the game unfolds amid the natural Appalachian landscape rather than extensive residential development. For golfers traveling through central West Virginia or exploring the state's collection of Ault designs, Sandy Brae represents the kind of unpretentious, terrain-driven golf that defines much of the region's public and semi-private course inventory.