Back across the canal and down the road from Pinehills you'll encounter one of several fine Brian Silva layouts that dot the area. Waverly Oaks, opened in 1998 (with 27 holes that include a par-33 nine), charges boldly up and down hills and highlands but spreads out generous landing areas that permit aggressive play off the tee. This is Silva, however, so don't expect to hit without thinking, unless you thrive on long second shots from bunkers and rough. If you play a fade, there are at least two spots on the course where you can use that little leaker to great advantage—your approach on the long par-4 sixth, where balls drifting right of target catch a closely mown half-bowl and feed back toward the green, and the glorious 221-yard (that's not even from the back tee), par-3 17th, where a softly cutting 3- or 4-wood will land left and short, then feed toward the cup in "reverse Redan" style.

Continuing on the Silva Tour, a shrewd Cape vacationer would parlay a one-night (or—by all means—longer) stay at the outstanding Wequassett Inn into golf rights at the otherwise private Cape Cod National Golf Club, on South Orleans Road in Brewster. This 6,900-yard layout finds the architect hewing to his theory that the great hole-design concepts have been discovered already; one need only try new executions of them. The Redan fifth at Cape Cod National and the Punchbowl sixth crib from the Seth Raynor songbook, but the overall flow and look of CCN is unforced and elegant. Green complexes—the 10th is particularly bold—and tee-shot landing areas are delightfully varied, creating a tingle of anticipation throughout the round. At No. 17, where the fairway heaves up like cresting waves, you're almost glad for the tilting lie from which your approach shot must be played.

The aforementioned Wequassett Inn not only can book you on Cape Cod National, it's a beauty of a resort. Well-designed and tastefully landscaped, it spreads along a secluded bluff that overlooks the region's most inspiring body of water (besides the Atlantic and Cape Cod Bay). Guestrooms are spacious and quiet, with luxurious built-in details and subtle lighting. The property plan is such that you don't get those first heartbreaking views of Pleasant Bay until you've stepped onto one of the Wequassett's many winding footpaths and ventured several hundred yards on an easterly heading. Most guests don't stop at water's edge, but instead continue down a 200-foot wooden pier that terminates in a floating dock whence all sailing and windsurfing adventures begin. Cocktails with a Pleasant view are sipped every summer evening at Twenty-Eight Atlantic, a formal but friendly bar with a patio that commands long views across the water to that distant point where the bay, in 1987, finally breached along one point of its narrow duneland barrier and became connected to the Atlantic.

The pleasure you get from working that Cape Cod National-Wequassett Inn parlay helps offset the ache of exclusion from such recent members-only beauties as Nantucket Golf Club. This Rees Jones canvas is now five years old, but its Brontëesque blending of wild and refined looks continues to influence course-builders who ferry over to study its award-winning contours.

Of all large-scale vacation resorts on Cape Cod, Ocean Edge is the most prepossessing to an arriving visitor. Your first glimpse of it from Route 6A takes in a broad upsweep of lawn with a long stone manor house set back at the crest. It goes without saying that this wonderfully eclectic structure was built as a sea captain's private home.

Ocean Edge is a time-management challenge. Its bayfront beach has a wonderful island-y feel that makes it hard to visit briefly. There is also a tournament-worthy tennis center, exciting golf, a new tavern with fairway-view dining and a refurbished golf clubhouse. One unique amenity is direct access to the Cape Cod Rail Trail, a 26-mile paved ribbon for bicycling clear to the National Seashore areas around the Cape's elbow. The Ocean Edge golf experience is both wry and robust, unfolding over an '80s-vintage Cornish and Silva layout done up British-style, with revetted pot bunkers and waving fescues that need just a Cape breeze—or a tourist's rusty golf swing—to bring them confoundingly into play.

Beyond the confines of these high-profile golf venues there are beloved courses where golf itself is the thing. Selecting among them is often a matter of sentimental preference. In Brewster, the 36-hole Captains complex fills its twin tee sheets all summer with loyal patrons. Cut from a thickly wooded parcel, it features treelines as a playing hazard more so than many other of the younger courses—it's reminiscent of Dennis Pines or even Hyannis Golf Club, where the biggest kettle on a Cape course strikes finishing-hole fear into players who aren't ready to glimpse its yawning depths. Olde Barnstable Fairgrounds, now in its second decade, is another daily-fee with excellent shot variety and formidable greens. There are a dozen others, but Highland Links, a nine-hole course I have played at least 30 times, is the most dramatically set golf property on the entire Cape—among public courses, at least. There is a 280-degree ocean view from several spots on this linksy wonder, which seems to be in better shape every summer I return to it.

But somehow I never seem to get in all the rounds I envisioned during our annual July sojourn. Too many distractions, from gallery-haunting to whale- and people-watching in Provincetown, to pickup volleyball out on Cahoon Hollow Beach. Plans are crafted on the trip down, then a summer-on-the-Cape bliss undoes them. That's where fall comes in—the Cape's quietly superior season for golf. It's upon us now—you should pull out your map and chart a course.