Stone Ridge - Ohio - USA

On a two week tour of the Northeast and Midwest, I played a dozen courses listed on this site. Stone Ridge had some tough competition, and though I enjoyed my round, I found it to be the least interesting of the group. I loved the setup around the clubhouse, a large range, followed by a putting green next to the first tee……but that was the highlight. The course is part of a housing development and is broken into 4 sections. Walking is quite difficult as there are long distances between the sections. I prefer approaches that provide alternatives (either aerial or running shots), firm and fast conditioning, larger greens (for a variety of different hole locations and interesting putts) and wide fairways which force the player to think about where to drive to best open up the next shot. I found none of these at Stone Ridge.

I’m hardly an urban planner, and the market certainly seems to suggest that as many homes should be crammed in as little space as possible (note: This opinion was expressed during the COVID low-interest-rate housing boom). As a reader of both The Economist and The Golfer’s Journal, I like to think that some middle ground exists where well-designed golf courses can exist alongside subdivisions. Columbus, Ohio—your correspondent’s base—has not readily supplied such opportunities. Although I try to avoid critiquing such residential hybrids just for existing, I can’t deny that there is something lacking. I’ve formulated a list of problems:

One is simple upkeep. I’ll preface this by saying that many of the subdivision courses in Columbus are operated by the same company, and the waste-quality of the bunkers or the sogginess of the fairways are similar between them. Basically, if a manager with some interest were to step up, the issues could be addressed.

Second is playing corridors. This complaint is mostly heard regarding trees, but opportunistic development plans often mean lining both sides of a fairway with housing, which is a nightmare for players who go wide of the mark. Sometimes ponds are added as a barrier, but let’s be honest: If a slicer is being forced to aim to avoid a pond on the right, he’s now aiming at the houses on the left. The more affordable the housing, the more likely it is to take mortars from next door. My sympathy to the latter parties only goes so far; I don’t know what Brezhnev sold you when you bought the condo at Chernobyl, but you should have seen the radiation poisoning coming. The answer then? Simply limit yourself to homes along one side of the fairway (and ideally the left). If holes are able to run parallel to each other, the lack of a barrier between them allows the course to breathe, and for lackluster players to breathe easier when looking for their ball. An unpenalized shot from deep rough is still better than losing a stroke and a ball to a dog that looked much smaller 200 yards ago.

Finally, creativity just seems to slip among residential courses. The mass-production concept of “freeway” golf has been resurrected in the form of subdivision golf, and there are multiple reasons. One is a lack of budget; Michael Hurdzan puts more work into blank-check properties like Erin Hills than he does the neighborhood accompaniments in my neck of the woods (that’s not completely removing the yoke of blame from the architect). When a creative architect can combine intriguing sand hazards with strategic foresight (for example, making players choose between distance and angle; leaving a longer, straighter shot for those who leave the driver in the bag and vice-versa), you get a much more satisfactory residential golf experience. If the designer can even use dirt from the construction process to place a tabletop green atop the shortest par three on the course, perched above deep bunkers in tribute to the Ross “volcano” concept…

OK, the last “theoretical” example was a bit too specific. You’ve probably caught on that I had somewhere in mind while writing up this review. Take the pleasant alternative I offered for each critical complaint, and you’ve got an idea what you can expect at Stone Ridge. It’s not going to top any lists soon, but it’s a stated improvement on the typical Saturday morning experience I described in my negative Columbus examples. I was pleasantly surprised at what Arthur Hills and Stone Ridge accomplished here, and would certainly recommend it to those in the area.