Geneva Farm Golf Course

Geneva Farm Golf Course, which also trades as Geneva Farm Golf Club, is a public 18-hole course at 217 Davis Road in Street, an unincorporated community in the rolling country of northern Harford County, Maryland. According to the club, it opened in July 1990 on what had been a historic farm, and it is a par 72 with 36 on each nine. The longest set of tees on the club’s scorecard, the Blue tees, measures 6,482 yards. Course directories credit the design to Robert Elder, and a 1992 newsletter of the regional association of golf course superintendents names the firm more precisely as Robert L. Elder & Sons, which it says designed and built the course in 1989.

The farm is still visible in the course and in the buildings. The club describes the layout as rolling, shaped by large mounds left by the old farmland, well bunkered, with water often in play, and calls it a forgiving, open-style layout that remains challenging for players of every level. The restaurant is called Twin Silos, and the same 1992 newsletter describes the clubhouse as a barn about two hundred years old, renovated by an Amish crew, with winding stairwells inside the silos and stone walls in the banquet room. Wikidata records the course as a golf course in Maryland with a par of 72, which matches the club.

From dairy farm to golf course

Very little has been published about the history of the property, and what follows rests mainly on one source: the September 1992 newsletter of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Golf Course Superintendents, which announced a meeting at the course and included a short presentation written by its superintendent at the time. According to that text, the land had been a family-owned and operated farm, with some 250 years as a dairy operation. Its owner decided to leave the declining Maryland farm market and convert the land to golf, so that the property could stay in the family and still pay its own way. The newsletter says the course was completely seeded in March 1990 and opened for play that July, which agrees with the date the club gives today.

The same text gives a few more details from the early years: bentgrass greens, ryegrass tees, fairways and roughs, a course measuring about 6,400 yards, some 210 acres of grass, and a grounds crew of eight. The superintendent, a former Navy SEAL who had grown up on a farm, wrote that he had been asked by the farmer to take responsibility for the turf without formal training, and that he had learned by reading, by taking university turfgrass courses, including at Rutgers, and by calling on neighboring superintendents. These details describe the course in 1992. We found no more recent source on the ownership, and the club’s website does not say who owns or runs the course today, so this page does not name an owner.

The name Geneva Farm itself is unexplained in the sources we found. The club’s website uses both Geneva Farm Golf Course and Geneva Farm Golf Club, and some directories write Geneva Farms; all designate the same course on Davis Road.

What it asks of you

The club’s scorecard lists four sets of tees, all par 72. The Blue tees measure 6,482 yards, the White tees 6,074 yards, the Gold tees 5,559 yards and the Red tees 5,252 yards. The card gives a course rating and slope for each set: 71.3 and 132 for the Blue tees, 69.6 and 127 for the White tees, 67.3 and 117 for the Gold tees, and 70.7 and 131 for the Red tees. The card does not say which ratings are for men and which for women; a rating of 70.7 on a course of 5,252 yards is consistent with a women’s rating, and a course directory lists separate men’s and women’s figures for the lower tees. A slope of 132 from the back tees is well above the standard value of 113, which places the course in the harder half of the scale despite its modest length.

The ratings are not the same everywhere, and this page follows the club’s card. The club’s course page gives 69.6 and 117 for the White tees, where the card says 127. One course directory gives 71.5 and 136 for the Blue tees, 69.2 and 129 for the White tees, 66.7 and 118 for men from the Gold tees, 72.6 and 132 for women from the Gold tees, and two pairs for the Red tees, 70.9 and 128 and 65.0 and 115. A booking platform and a tee time aggregator show a rating of 69.5 with a slope of 120 on a total of 6,446 yards; another booking page gives 71.6 and 132 on 6,455 yards for the Blue tees; and one golf app lists the course as a par 73. We could not reach the USGA course rating database to settle the question. Ratings are revised from time to time, and the figures in force are those posted at the course.

The challenge comes from the ground more than from the yardage. The card shows ten par 4s, four par 3s and four par 5s, with the par 5s at the 1st, 8th, 12th and 16th. Reviewers describe many changes of elevation, several blind shots, and fairways that alternate between wide and narrow, so that choosing where to place the ball matters more than length. A course directory describes bentgrass greens and fairways, between 31 and 40 bunkers and water in play; an open data page built on mapping data counts 41 bunkers and two water features. The club’s local rules state that Davis Road is out of bounds, a rule that matters because the road runs through the property.

The layout

The map printed on the club’s scorecard shows how the course sits on the farm. The clubhouse stands on Davis Road. The 5th to the 9th lie north of the road, in a separate loop of their own; the other thirteen holes lie south of it. Around the clubhouse, the 1st, 10th and 18th are grouped around a pond, and the 3rd and the 17th also have water beside them on the map. Toward the southern end of the property, the 12th to the 16th run side by side in long parallel corridors. The yardages below are from the Blue tees, with the White, Gold and Red tees in brackets, followed by the stroke index from the card.

• 1st: par 5, 500 yards (470, 459, 384), stroke index 5.
• 2nd: par 4, 381 yards (361, 350, 339), stroke index 9.
• 3rd: par 4, 370 yards (334, 290, 273), stroke index 13.
• 4th: par 4, 360 yards (334, 280, 272), stroke index 11.
• 5th: par 4, 390 yards (362, 343, 329), stroke index 7.
• 6th: par 4, 476 yards (442, 375, 363), stroke index 1.
• 7th: par 3, 170 yards (146, 127, 125), stroke index 15.
• 8th: par 5, 485 yards (476, 444, 399), stroke index 3.
• 9th: par 3, 146 yards (130, 118, 109), stroke index 17.
• 10th: par 4, 364 yards (356, 329, 324), stroke index 8.
• 11th: par 4, 350 yards (340, 328, 310), stroke index 14.
• 12th: par 5, 530 yards (500, 437, 434), stroke index 2.
• 13th: par 3, 147 yards (130, 120, 97), stroke index 16.
• 14th: par 4, 371 yards (351, 336, 324), stroke index 10.
• 15th: par 4, 393 yards (374, 360, 349), stroke index 6.
• 16th: par 5, 535 yards (493, 453, 449), stroke index 4.
• 17th: par 3, 147 yards (132, 125, 92), stroke index 18.
• 18th: par 4, 367 yards (343, 285, 280), stroke index 12.

The front nine measures 3,278 yards from the Blue tees and the back nine 3,204. The hole-by-hole figures add up to the totals printed on the card for every set of tees except one: the card gives the back nine from the Gold tees as 2,775 yards, while its holes add up to 2,773. The overall Gold total of 5,559 yards is consistent with the holes.

The hole that defines the round is the 6th, ranked hardest on the card. It is a par 4 of 476 yards from the Blue tees, long enough to be a short par 5 on many courses, and it sits in the loop north of Davis Road. The 12th, a par 5 of 530 yards, comes second on the stroke index, and the 16th, at 535 yards, is the longest hole on the course. The par 3s are short: the 13th and 17th both measure 147 yards from the back, and the 17th is the easiest hole on the card. From the forward tees, those two par 3s drop to 97 and 92 yards. Beyond the card and the map, we found no reliable hole-by-hole description from the club or from a golf publication, so this page does not describe individual holes in more detail.

What golfers say

Geneva Farm draws a modest number of public reviews, spread over golf review sites, a golf app, booking platforms and the map reviews quoted by a tee time aggregator, which counts several hundred with an average of about four stars out of five. Many reviews are several years old, and conditions on a course change from season to season. The points below summarize what recurs. They are other people’s opinions, not ours; nobody from Panxis has played the course, and we name no reviewer.

What comes up in its favor

• The staff and the welcome are the most consistent compliment, from the pro shop to private lunches in the clubhouse.
• Reviewers describe the layout as fun, with challenging greens, water on the back nine and plenty of elevation change, and say it rewards thinking your way around.
• Value for money comes up often, with several reviewers calling the price fair for the quality of the course.
• Pace of play is generally rated good, and some reviewers note shorter waits than at busier public courses around Baltimore.
• The most recent reviews we read, including one from June 2026, describe the course as in excellent or well maintained condition, with greens in good shape.
• The food at the clubhouse restaurant is often mentioned favorably.

What comes up against

• Conditions are the most debated point, and they vary with the year: some reviews, mostly from 2015 to 2022, mention hard or worn tee boxes, bumpy or slow greens, unrepaired ball marks, a temporary green and bare patches on some greens.
• Some reviewers found the greens firm and hard to hold, and one season’s reviews mention greens recovering slowly from a fungus problem.
• The rough and fairways were too long for some players on the day they visited.
• A few reviewers find the layout occasionally odd, and the blind shots and hills can frustrate a first visit.
• On busy days, such as public holidays, pace of play can slow down.

How to play it

Geneva Farm is a public course with daily-fee play. Tee times are booked online through the club’s booking page or by phone at (410) 452-8800, extension 1 for the pro shop. The club offers a large fleet of golf cars, and course directories say walking is permitted. The scorecard’s local rules ask players to keep carts at least 30 feet from tees and greens, forbid bringing alcohol or coolers onto the property and state that Geneva Farm is a non-metal spike facility. The practice facilities include a driving range, which the club says can accommodate even the longest hitters, and a practice putting green. One golf review site states that the course has no range; that is contradicted by the club and by other directories.

The club runs leagues: its leagues page lists a nine-hole evening league, played on the front nine every week with a 5 p.m. start, from April to October, open to golfers who come every week or only when it suits them; information packets for the other in-house leagues are kept in the clubhouse. The calendar also includes a senior league. The club organizes outings with tee time or shotgun starts and catering packages, and holds themed events: a nine-hole night round with illuminated holes and glowing balls, and the Superintendent’s Revenge, scheduled for October 24, 2026, in which the grounds crew sets up tricky pin positions, temporary tees and obstacles such as hay bales, in aid of Mason-Dixon Community Services. Summer camps for juniors aged 7 to 15 are run on site by an independent junior golf academy.

The club publishes no green fee on its rates page at the time of writing. Rates are shown when booking a tee time.

The clubhouse and the restaurant

The Twin Silos Restaurant is open, according to the club, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday and until 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday, and offers online ordering. The club has a private room for 36 to 40 people and an outdoor pavilion for up to 170, which it says it rents without a room fee for private events. Weddings are held at the course with an outside catering partner. The club’s contact page gives the same opening hours for the facility as a whole, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. from Sunday to Thursday and to 9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

Getting there and when to go

The course is at 217 Davis Road, Street, MD 21154, in the north of Harford County, not far from the Pennsylvania state line. Davis Road crosses the property, with the clubhouse beside it. The 1992 newsletter gave directions from Baltimore and Washington that still describe the general route: take I-95 north to exit 77B for Route 24, follow Route 24 north through Bel Air and Forest Hill and through Rocks State Park, where the speed limit is low, then turn right onto Davis Road about 1.2 miles after leaving the park; the clubhouse is about half a mile on the right. Roads and signs may have changed since then, so check a current map before setting out.

The club does not publish a season. Its evening league runs from April to October, which is the main golf season in this part of Maryland, and one golf directory lists the course as open year round. In winter, opening depends on the weather, and a call to the pro shop is the safest way to check.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources consulted in October 2026: OpenStreetMap for the location and outline of the course; Wikidata for the identifier, the location in Maryland and the par; the club’s website for the address, the opening date, the description of the course, the ratings on its course page, the amenities, the leagues, events, outings, restaurant, private rooms and hours; the club’s scorecard for the tees, yardages, pars, stroke indexes, ratings and slopes, local rules and the map of the layout; the September 1992 newsletter of the Mid-Atlantic Association of Golf Course Superintendents, held in the Michigan State University turfgrass archive, for the farm’s history, the builder, the 1990 seeding and opening, the barn clubhouse, the grasses of the time and the old directions; and course directories, booking platforms and an open golf data page for the architect, grasses, bunker counts and alternative ratings.

Where sources disagree, we say so. The club’s course page gives a slope of 117 for the White tees and its scorecard 127. Directories and booking platforms give several other ratings and slopes, total yardages of 6,446 and 6,455 yards, and in one case a par of 73. The card’s Gold back nine total differs by two yards from the sum of its holes. Directories credit Robert Elder, and the 1992 newsletter Robert L. Elder & Sons. One review site gives a different phone number and says the course has no driving range, which the club contradicts.

Several things could not be verified. The USGA course rating database and two golf review and course information sites refused our requests; for those reviews we relied only on the excerpts shown by search engines. An encyclopedia entry on the course appears in search results but could not be opened. We found no source naming the current owner, and none explaining the name Geneva Farm. The account of the farm’s history comes from a single 1992 source. The opinion section summarizes public reviews; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations. Nobody from Panxis has played or visited this course, and this page is no substitute for a round.

The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. This page contains no commercial link and earns us no commission. If you know the course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it. Details and tee times are on the club’s website.

Other courses nearby

Closest to this one in our United States directory:

• Columbia Country Club — 59 mi
• Chevy Chase Club — 60 mi
• Langston Golf Course — 60 mi
• Congressional Country Club — 62 mi