Wednesday, February 28, 2001
New golf course draws rave reviews
Longaberger tee times open Thursday
By Carey Hoffman
Enquirer contributor
Ohio's hottest new golf course is also receiving national acclaim.
Golf Digest just named Longaberger Golf Club as “America's Best New Upscale Public Course of 2000,” and the opportunity to play it at a convenient time in 2000 could require early planning.
As in Thursday.
Tee times for the entire season open that day for the course, located an hour east of Columbus in Nashport, and are available by phone at 740-763-1100. The season runs March 31 to Nov.3.
Last year, despite the course being less than a year old, all times prior to Labor Day were filled by the end of March. Soon after, the entire season was booked, with an average of 15 groups a day occupying the waiting list.
Longaberger was developed to deliver a premium golf course to match its reputation in the basket business. “We're here to grow the Longaberger name and introduce it to people who don't know it,” assistant pro Sean Kenily said. “Longaberger tries to do everything first-class, and this golf course is an example of that.”
The wood and glass clubhouse takes up 64,000 square feet of the 925-acre property and includes two restaurants and spacious locker rooms. Every player gets a locker for the day as part of the $115 greens fee. The decks and exterior overlook the course, suggesting a great golfing lodge somewhere in the Mountain West.
The course itself, though, is more reminiscent of the Appalachians. Prominent Toledo-based architect Arthur Hills creatively has wound the course up and down the green hills of this former farmland.
You can play all day at Longaberger and not draw a level lie in the fairway — defining the course's character. It plays up to 7,243 yards as a true championship test, and it is as varied, hole by hole, as any course you can find.
The most memorable hole is No.8, where Hills took a dead-end chunk of terrain and created one of the most unusual tests in the state. The 444-yard par-4 offers two options off the tee — bust it dead ahead and pray you carry a long stretch of tall grass, or head right and take your chances with a fairway banked like a NASCAR track around a stand of trees.
The second shots then present their own challenges. The straight-ahead route must be followed by a short iron into a green surrounded front, left and rear by water. Up on the high road, you're left to invent your own side-hill shot by either carrying the ball to the bottom of the hill or slinging in some kind of running long iron down the slope.
Longaberger's home holes, played in a valley beneath the clubhouse, provide, fittingly, the course's best stretch. No.14 is a 198-yard par-3 where the clubhouse looms in the backdrop for the first time all day. No.16 is a strong 527-yard par-5 gamble routed over and then all along a large lake. No.17 is a 435-yard par-4 that delivers you into a landscaped amphitheater that has an Augusta National elegance.
And No.18 is a great finishing hole, an uphill, 466-yard par 4 banked by hillsides that suggest they could accommodate 20,000 people for the wrap-up of a major golf tournament.
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New golf course draws rave reviews
