A Golf Trip to Columbus, Ohio
During the weekend of the 2018 Memorial Tournament at Muirfield Village (an overwhelmingly fantastic place to be), myself and several pals decided to make a full golf weekend and played 54 holes at a few of Columbus, Ohio’s finer public golf clubs. We visited The Virtues, Denison Golf Course, and NorthStar Golf Course. Here’s what I thought…
The Virtues Golf Club
Saturday started with excitement. The Virtues (formerly Longaberger Golf Club) is a public track in the Columbus area that always gets a ton of accolades in the “best non-private” category in Ohio. This place does not disappoint!
The Virtues Golf Club is a 1999 Arthur Hills design about an hour’s drive east of Columbus in Nashport. When you drive past the enormous Longaberger basket office building, you’re close. The Virtues lays on one of the most expansive golf properties I’ve ever seen. Its 7243 yards of golf sits on a set of rolling hills, and you’re often isolated from seeing other players or even other holes. You’ll play to wide fairways, large contoured greens, and near pristine conditions (even if you consider that mid Ohio had been blasted by rain and rough weather…)
Does it Live Up to the Hype?
The course starts out with a fantastic par four. Your tee box overlooks a high point of the valley with views that go on for miles, then you’re asked to hit to a fairway that slopes up and to the right. Blast it center right for a short iron in, or if you inexplicably first-tee slice it, you’re left with a shorter club but you’re going uphill from the rough.
The fairways here are plenty forgiving, but you must play precise shots into the greens. Number four is a sweeping par five that starts from a perched tee, where you have to sling a tight draw to an open landing area. The more left you go, the better angle you’ll have to the shallow green that angles right. Hit it both ways!
The short par-4 6th hole is another Art Hills hole pattern you see him use a lot. Only 338 yards from the back, you get a huge fairway for a conservative iron player, but you can send a driver out there and get near the green. Great hole.
The true star of this course is the complicated 8th hole featuring a dual fairway with a peninsula green jutting out into the lake. It’s brilliant! Fourteen is a fantastic mid-length par three that offers a fantastic view of the valley. You begin to realize you need to get back up the hill to the clubhouse, and the excellent 466-yard eighteenth gradually takes you home.
The Virtues Reflections
Growing up in suburban Detroit, I’ve played my fair share of Arthur Hills courses. There are probably at least fifteen in the area that I visited often. He’s not been my favorite course architect, but there’s rarely been a course I truly disliked. There have always been good holes, and then a few inexplicably bad or silly holes. I think The Virtues is probably one of the more spectacular properties he’s built on, and one of his most complete courses. It’s a challenge for a low handicapper as well as hackers, and you’re presented with a variety of interesting shots to hit. There are only a few places where you can truly ruin your round with a bad shot. Often times Hills gives you room to make a good play to make up for it.
Virtues lived up to the hype in my mind. They’ve got a great facility, a wonderful staff, and solid food options. We were right in front of an AJGA event, and they often hold tournaments. I particularly like that they’re making themselves a destination for top players.
Extra Longaberger!
Another cool thing The Virtues offered was that they held a game on the par-3 9th. They offered a 2-to-1 wager for pro shop credit if you hit the green, and also did a daily closest to the pin game. Definitely made the round more interesting!
Denison Golf Club
Denison Golf Club (formerly Granville Golf Course) immediately grabs your attention with its Donald Ross heritage. From the time you drive into the parking lot and see the old clubhouse and tiny putting green, you instantly time-travel back to 1924. This course does not have the pedigree of other Ross classics in Ohio like Scioto or Inverness, but it’s exactly what you want and expect. This is Old-School Golf.
What you’ll find at Denison GC is a ~6600 yard course on a mostly wide open, sweeping patch of land. Like many courses this age, it’s probably due for a restoration, but I found it to be in very good shape with finely manicured fairways and fast, smooth greens. I will say I was impressed that the place was not overrun with trees, something that is all too common in Golden Age courses. You’ll encounter a Ross staple – a short, flat, easy starting hole, winding your way around gentle hills, through an unfortunately positioned housing development, then finish with the spectacular 369 yard par-4 18th, with it 150 foot tee-to-green drop.
Classic Denison
There are quite a few standout holes at Denison. The first you find is the second hole – a 444 yarder that gently fades to the right, with a perched up amphitheater green. Then you have a long par-three 5th that can range from a driver hole to a 9 iron, with a tough back-to-front green. The sixth is a great three-shot hole that leads you to a small, perched green, then walk straight up to the par-three seventh. This hole is incredibly wide open, but only about a 7 or 8 iron. It’ll play tricks with your mind!
Thirteen is a great short par four at 323 yards. You’ll need a smartly placed drive as there’s a major false front at the green. We had a few shots roll off when facing a tricky front pin. The fourteenth is a boring par three that begins your journey through that housing development. The long par-four fifteenth features a fun drop shot drive, and we loved the short sixteenth. It’s a bit of a missed opportunity as it’s a fairly benign and circular green, however, if they cut the front of it as a green even fifteen more feet, it’d be an exhilarating drivable hole that may or may not hold your Titleist.
All the drama comes to a peak on eighteen tee box. You can overlook most the course and even the town from the tee box, and again have a chance to drive the green. Bring your camera, then bombs away.
Denison Reflections
We found Denison Golf Club to be a very enjoyable round. Ross lovers should not miss it, and it provides a nice little college town in the Columbus area with a “diamond in the rough” course to enjoy. For what you pay to play it, it’s a something well worth the drive outside of the city center.
NorthStar Golf Club
The final loop of the trip brought us to NorthStar Golf Club, a 2007 John Cook design about 30 minutes north of Columbus. This might have been the highlight of our weekend! It’s one of the longest courses you’ll ever see coming in around 7600 yards. You’ll feel like the guys playing just down the road at The Memorial would fit in quite easily over here. The good news is for a regular human golfer, this is an extremely flexible and forgiving place. And that equals a ton of fun.
The Course
First off, there’s an enormous amount of room here. I’m talking wide fairways and huge greens with subtle movement. What does that mean? It means both the bombers and the hackers are expected to get the ball in play, but the key to scoring will be angles. There are a few holes out there that feature 70-80 yard wide playing corridors, but if you hit to the wrong side, it’s very likely you’ll find a smartly placed bunker or hazard in your way. At one point, my partner hit one way left and I went way right, and I GPS’d 91 yards in between.
Hole three is a great par five that winds to the right, then the left for 600 whole yards. Ten is another great par five. It swoops sharply to the left from the tee (the big hitter tees are some 90 yards off in a marsh!), up over a hill, then to a shallow green guarded with a front/center sand trap. No clue how to get it on in two…
The short par-four twelfth leaves you with a deceptively open fairway, but leaves a super narrow green that has sand on the left and a big drop off on the right. It’s got a Biarritz-style swale in the middle, so use that slope to get your ball close. The final hole may not be a great finisher for the regular weekend player, as it requires less than driver to get in the fairway, then a near 200-yard carry around a hazard. It’s outstanding for the low handicapper, but not a ton of fun to need to bail into a narrow strip on the left and scramble for your par.
NorthStar Reflections
NorthStar’s width and angles are pretty uncommon, and in my mind, very welcome. Certainly not something I see often as a Chicagoland guy, where much of the open land was gobbled up decades ago! NorthStar is a unique and impressive place, one that I imagine I’d come back to often if I were local to the Columbus area.
