Orangeville Golf Club Review

The best things at Orangeville Golf Club are the things nobody has touched since the thirties. The nine holes amble over 2,800 yards of gently tilting ground, and every fairway is framed by hardwoods big enough to have names; the canopy does most of the design work, narrowing lines and forcing the odd deliberate fade that a treeless course of this length would never ask for. The greens are the surprise. They are large for a course this modest and boldly rolled, with old-fashioned swales and back-to-front pitch that make first-timers three-putt and regulars smug.

That is essentially the whole examination, and on the second lap you know the answers, which is why the design grade stays modest. Conditioning is rural and seasonal, lovely in June, scuffed by August. But the place has the unhurried charm that small-town Ontario courses are losing one clubhouse renovation at a time, and an evening nine here as the shadows stretch across Dufferin County remains a genuinely lovely way to spend forty dollars.