Public access golf in the GTA

[John Foley]

Did not want to hi-jack the Score Top 100 thread but wanted to bring this up. The Greater Toronto Area is a wealth of great private courses (St Georges, National, Paintbrush / Pulpit, Beacon Hall etc..) but  I was somewhat surprised by the lack of number of public courses on the list.


The courses at Osprey Valley are very good (though a bit of a ways away), Eagles Nest is solid as is Copper Creek. IMO Glen Abbey is a little long in the tooth. I've like Angus Glen and Pipers Heath.


Should there be more or is this accurate for a city the size of the GTA?

[SB]

That's kind of how it goes, really.  The good public courses, aside from municipal courses, get converted into private clubs because they can be worth more money, especially in a $$$ market like Toronto.  Also, land costs are usually quite high so it's hard to justify building a public course.  If you look at places like NYC, LA, and SF, there really is a lack of quality public courses.  Chicago has quite a few, but most are municipal.  Dallas is one of the few that has bucked the trend, probably because the land is cheaper.

[Wayne_Kozun]

The real estate bubble is going to continue to be an issue as we are losing courses,  both public and private, to developers. Glen Abbey is not getting developed for now, but that may still happen in the future. Apparently Copper Creek is going to go down to a nine hole course as they are developing half of the property. If you own a public course on developable land, why wouldn’t you sell out for several hundred million?


The courses that you mentioned are pretty good. There are also the two courses at Bond Head, and Friday Harbour is supposed to be very good, although I haven’t played there yet. Lakeview is also supposed to be very nice, especially for a muni.


There are also several good courses in Muskoka that aren’t too far away.


But if you are a ranker and you live in Toronto do you really want to go and play the next tier of courses?  And if those courses made the list there would be even more complaining about all of the Southern Ontario courses on the list.

[Ronald Montesano]

I can attest to the housing explosion across GTA. We travel the 407 (the private highway) around Toronto when playing school tournaments, and from its beginning near Burlington/Hamilton to its (temporary) end just past Oshawa, there is a constant, condo village appearance each and every year. What was farmland, is now a brand new postal/zip code. I've been doing the drive for 20 years, and am blown away by how far the reach is. What is more, downtown housing (high rise condos) is just as fertile. They go up and up and up.

Toronto is this massive entity that should rival any other city on the planet for size, in the next 25 years. Fortunately, national politics does not take place (officially) in TO.

[Ian Andrew]

Should there be more or is this accurate for a city the size of the GTA?

It's correct.

Lakeview is terrific, but very short. I'd vote for it.
If you want good public golf, you get well away from the city.
Osprey Valley is great. Kawartha in Peterborough is one hour - worth the drive.

There's good golf, well good holes, or good land, but not much great golf to be found.

I began in public golf and have played almost every one of them.
Some great land - like Pheasant Run - but you need a rebuild to be great.

The rest of the land belongs to housing developers.
Clublink (Tri-White) - owner of Glen Abbey - is a housing developer.

That help?

[Peter Pallotta]

What Ian said, of course.

Yes to Herbert Strong's Lakeview, which I played many times. Yes also to the ones John mentioned, but I preferred the lesser known and never ranked St Andrews Valley. If you get outside of TO, you get to play Thompson's (public) Rockway in Kitchener.

[Edward Glidewell]

Atlanta has terrible public golf, especially when factoring in how long the average round is at most of the courses near the city (generally 5 hours at best; sometimes 6+). All of the best public courses in the area are 45+ minutes from Atlanta proper, except maybe Wolf Creek.

Toronto seems like it has better options.

[John Foley]

Thanks for the insight guys. It's what I thought also. Just amazed by the amount of development in the area and given the cost of land I'm not surprised when some of the places get plowed under for more housing.

[Kalen Braley]

Glad I opened this thread...I was thinking the other GTA! 

[Mark Fedeli]

I don't know how it is since the pandemic, but in the dozen or so times I've been up to Toronto and played Osprey Valley, on both weekdays and weekends, is was relatively quiet. Always easy to get a tee time and always an option to play all day. Compare that with any reasonably good, reasonably priced public course that's 45 miles from New York City (like the 5 Bethpage courses) and you're lucky to get a time on any course, any day of the week. So by that measure, maybe Toronto is doing alright?