BraeBen Golf Course Review

BraeBen should not work. It is a municipal course built on a capped landfill beside Highway 403, and every contour on it was trucked in. Yet stand on the elevated first tee with the wind ripping across the mounds and the fescue leaning, and the imitation links stops feeling like an imitation. The course plays firm and open the way links golf should: run-ups are always available, the bunkering is punchy, and the elevated plateau catches a breeze that turns club selection into an argument on every hole.

Views from the high points run clear to the Toronto skyline. The compromises are municipal ones. Greens are kept at public pace, the par-5s repeat a formula, and high-traffic tee decks show their scars by late summer. But the city charges well under eighty dollars for a course with genuine character, walkers are welcome, and the junior programs run out of the learning nine next door are exactly what public golf is for. A civic project that deserves the compliment of being judged as a golf course.