Pitch Shots - New Northeast Ohio Clubhouses

In a bit of an anomaly, two local municipal courses are opening clubhouses this summer, Ridgewood in Parma and Ellsworth in Hudson.

The whole new clubhouse phenomenon is usually reserved for private courses, but recently I’ve noticed that public courses are going this way too, or more precisely, municipal courses. Several years ago, Twinsburg invested in a new clubhouse, a move that was split among its residents, but it gave the city a place to host events, and in my opinion, is geared more towards the restaurant that is located inside it than golfers. Fast forward to last year where Cuyahoga Falls renovated their clubhouse at Brookledge, which honestly, would benefit tremendously with a new building, and they focused on egress and moving players more easily between purchasing golf and food. I would even backtrack all the way to the Metroparks’ investment at Big Met which is arguably the best clubhouse between all the Metropark courses including Manakiki. Everything boils down to what each city is trying to accomplish. Unfortunately, I feel Parma took the opportunity to build the clubhouse at Ridgewood to compete as an event center. It’s a huge building that required expanding the parking lot too. Like Twinsburg, it will have a pub/restaurant attached to it. They did invest a bit into the course, most notably redoing the eighteenth green (soon to the ninth when they reverse the nines) and pulling out the trees so people have a great view of the par five seventh (sixteen) and the lovely short par four ninth (eighteen). Now Hudson on the other hand put in a really wonderful clubhouse that almost competes with Lake Forest and CC of Hudson as a third, albeit public, country club. In fact, I expect the new clubhouse will make Ellsworth one of the best, if not the best, stops on our schedule at CNCGA. As I’ve gotten older, the clubhouse has become a bigger part of the golfing experience, and I expect the guys will love it!