Charlotte has four "oldline" clubs:
1. Charlotte CC
2. Myers Park CC
3. Carmel CC
4. Quail Hollow
Quail is home of the Wachovia Championship and the area "CEO's" club of choice. Tom Fazio redid the Palmer design a few years ago, with a view towards winning a PGA Tour event. Quail's the smallest membership of the four and the toughest ticket.
Charlotte and Myers Park are the old money clubs, and each has a Ross course that has been recently renovated (and allegedly restored to Ross specs). Charlotte has the better golf course, but Myers Park has the better location. I certainly woudln't dismiss MP out of hand as one of the fellows did earlier in this thread.
Carmel has the best physical facilitites of the four, and enjoys the luxury of 2 good (not great) 18 hole golf courses. Its South Course was renovated by Rees Jones in 1989 and the North Course by Tom Jackson in 1995. Carmel's the easiest of the four to get into.
After the four, Charlotte has a number of other private clubs:
Longview is new, and word is there's no one to play with down there yet. It has a Nicklaus golf course that gets pretty good marks.
Piper Glen is a TPC golf course (another Palmer design) and isn't really private in the true sense of the word.
The Pointe and The Peninsula are both up at Lake Norman (in North Charlotte) and are part of residential developments. Greg Norman did the Pointe and Rees Jones did The Peninsula.
Ballantyne Country Club (way in South Charlotte ) is also Rees Jones and also part of a residential development. Firethorne (technically in Union County) is nearby and generally gets better marks for its golf course than Ballantyne.
Carolina is a neat old Ross design in a crappy part of town that is underrated (probably because it's so short [[I don't think they can stretch it out over 6,400 yards]] and because mostly younger folks are members there).
Providence Country Club is also here, but it doesn't get much press at all. It's a typical Dan Maples residential golf course whose routing was clearly meant to accomodate the developers' need to squeeze as many houses onto the property as possible.
If you were will ing to stray a little farther out, check out the Old North State Club up at Badin Lake. Old North State is about an hour and 15 minutes from Charlotte, but is one of Tom Fazio's better designs. The club is still fairly young, but the course has been near the top of the NC state golf course rankings for a while now.
Good luck.