List of "Best Municipal Golf Courses"

[PThomas]

just played Champions in Columbus last week -- a Trent Jones course that used to be a country club...it had some REALLY good holes, I thought, and was in good shape

[Coral_Ridge]

Since the talk of Chandler Egan and his design of North Fulton in Atlanta I believe the golf course Eastmoreland in Portland is one of his.  And a top notch muni as well.



http://www.eastmorelandgolfcourse.com/

[Brad Klein]

Manikiki, part of the Cleveland Park District system, is pretty good, too.

Defining "municipal" is faily easy at the core, but it gets a little shaded, as with public university courses and military courses. But I think that if it's owned and run by a municipal authority where there is some green-fee reduction benefit to local residents as opposed tro non-residents, then you're on the right track. Generally, I would exclude university and military courses, since they fail to meet these last criteria. But it could be federal, state-county or city/town owned and operated. It's also okay if it's owned by a municipality but run by a private management firm. Investment alone is not enough, thus I'd rule out the RTJ Trail. The Oklahoma and Tennesee Trails seem to have closer state operational involvement, however.

[Andy Doyle]

What about Orange County National (Panther Lakes and Crooked Cat0 in Orlando?

AD

[BCrosby]

Speaking of North Fulton, I learned this weekend that Bobby Jones served as a director for FDR's WPA starting about 1935. Which helps explain where Fulton County got the money to build North Fulton (a WPA project) and pay Egan's design fee in the middle of the Great Depression.

The mystery remains, however, as to why an architect living in Oregon was commissioned to design a muni in Atlanta, Georgia. Though I have my theories.

Bob

[astavrides]

Manikiki, part of the Cleveland Park District system, is pretty good, too.

Defining "municipal" is faily easy at the core, but it gets a little shaded, as with public university courses and military courses. But I think that if it's owned and run by a municipal authority where there is some green-fee reduction benefit to local residents as opposed tro non-residents, then you're on the right track. Generally, I would exclude university and military courses, since they fail to meet these last criteria. But it could be federal, state-county or city/town owned and operated. It's also okay if it's owned by a municipality but run by a private management firm. Investment alone is not enough, thus I'd rule out the RTJ Trail. The Oklahoma and Tennesee Trails seem to have closer state operational involvement, however.

I agree that university (especially private univerisities) and military courses should be excluded--since a lot of them arent open to the general public and since they arent municipally or state operated. (Do federally operated non-military courses exist?  Maybe in a National Park somewhere?) But I dont think that green fee reduction to residents vs non residents should be the criteria.  The LA city courses charge the same to all players (although to get a reservation card, you must live in the city I think).  And there are plenty of non-muni courses that offer a fee reduction to the locals.  All the public courses in Hawaii for example.

[Coral_Ridge]

Since Brad Klein posted on this thread, I picked up my copy of "A Walk in the Park" ( I love the title) and looked over his piece "Making a Muni" on page 103.  How does his "baby" Wintonbury Hills by Pete Dye/Tim Liddy shape up today?  Might it crack the Golfweek Modern list anytime soon?  And being a muni at that.

Wintonbury Hills

[Kenny Lee Puckett]

Does the Old Course at St. Andrews qualify as a "Muni"?

Fernandina Beach gets a nod here...

JWK

[Tom Dunne]

I drove almost two hours this past weekend to play Wintonbury Hills, and it was absolutely worth it. What a fun course, what a great place this is! Pete Dye, Tim Liddy, Brad Klein et al have made a real contribution to public golf here. Staff is really friendly, and there aren't really any of the airy pretensions of the CCFAD here.

This was the first Pete Dye course I've ever seen that could be described as "mellow". But WH is one of those courses that is harder to score on than it looks, though it's definitely playable by all levels (I played the round w/ my girlfriend, who is basically a beginner, and she loved it...). It's not especially long, but time after time I found myself making bogey from 50-100 yards out in the fairway. The front nine is quite open (really enjoyed the downhill drive on #5), but the back enters the forest to approach the Tunxis Reservoir, and you have to tighten your belt with the driver a bit....something I wasn't prepared to do.

One thing I noticed as far as course setup goes--many of the edges around the greens were fringed with a very high collar of rough, thereby allowing the imperfect shot to sort of "hit the wall" and not go bounding too far away. I thought maybe this is directed at helping the public golfer out (fine by me), but it also created a number of vexing shots where the ball is nestled on the fringe against the rough, forcing you to kind of blade it out....

Pace of play was great, and on a Sunday afternoon where in W'Chester we'd have at least a 5 hour round--we got around in a shade under four. Coming off 18, I didn't want to stop playing--so I didn't! Turned right back around and played a couple more holes, out of sequence. And the great thing was seeing fathers with their sons and daughters out on the course at dusk, practicing their putting or chipping etc. Such a nice tranquil atmosphere. Great place. It should be on any list of "best munis", as long as that's not taken to mean "hardest munis"...