Review: Inniscrone Golf Club

On most of my previous golf course reviews, I've done my best to remain positive. Sure, Piney Apple wasn't very good, but I wasn't expecting it to be. Yes, I wasn't a fan of Richland, but what can you expect from a course in the middle of a housing development where the golf didn't come first? At least that course wasn't very difficult. Today, we're going to be a bit less forgiving.

Inniscrone Golf Club is in Avondale, Pennsylvania, which is sort of not really near anything. It's vaguely closer to Philadelphia than to Baltimore, and is only a couple miles away from Delaware, but there's not a whole lot out there. Except a mushroom farm. This is something you won't find on their website, for good reason. Not many people would willingly advertise the fact that at least a third of their golf course stinks. It's not quite as bad as manure, or sewage (thanks Waynesboro Municipal), but it isn't a good smell. That has nothing to do with the quality of the course, but it's something to keep in mind, and probably a big reason why a golf course ranked by Golfweek as the sixth best public course (and 11th by Golf Magazine) in the state of Pennsylvania can be played for $45.

The 10th green

It's almost tempting to call this course a bargain. After all, it was designed by Gil Hanse, the same guy who designed the Olympic golf course in Rio. I'm not sure if this is his first course, but I'm pretty sure it is. This fact isn't advertised at all, interestingly enough. In the About Us section, it mentions his name, but nothing about him. And I think the reason for this is the same reason why I didn't really enjoy the golf course: the people running it have no idea how a golf course like this should be run. Inniscrone opened as a private course, but is now owned by the surrounding township, and managed by something called the Heathland Hospitality Group. This does not sound like a recipe for success.

The 1st green

And you know what? It isn't! I played Inniscrone on September 22, and the course was completely and utterly soaked. This would have been understandable if there had just been a bunch of rain, but September was a pretty dry month in the Northeast. I went and looked at the rainfall totals for Avondale, and in the two weeks prior to my round, they had...a third of an inch. Nearly all of that total came more than a week before I played. Big surprise, the course is hideously overwatered. I can almost guarantee it was meant to play fast and firm, and while those exact conditions can be difficult to achieve in southeastern Pennsylvania on soil which is probably clay-based (and therefor drains poorly), the ball should roll at least a little bit. But they weren't. I don't think I had a single drive end up farther than 5 feet away from where it landed. Plugged lies? You bet. Spongy turf with shallow roots? Definitely. Just taking a wedge out of the bag sent foot-long divots flying. But hey, at least the course looks green!

The 6th green. Well, the 6th flag, anyway.

Anyway, I suppose I should actually talk about the course. The fact is, even if conditions had been better, I still don't think I would have liked the course very much. There was some strategy, but it was overshadowed by overuse of native areas, and each hole felt too isolated. The course felt kind of disjointed. Not that 18 holes running parallel to each other is better, but I like to get a sense of continuity. I want to feel like each hole is related in some sort of way, even if they don't border each other. Inniscrone felt like a collection of holes, rather than a complete golf course. The sum of the parts didn't add up. It felt like I was playing a course that had been limited by environmental restrictions.

The 9th green

Another issue I had was that the reviews of the course I'd read before described the course as "quirky" and "fun". That was not my experience. P.B Dye was a quirky golf course. The greens were ridiculous, and it had all the Dye touches. It was a tough course, but I got the sense that it had a sense of humor. Yeah, some of these holes are stupid, but they're stupid in a fun way. That didn't happen at Inniscrone. It was no less difficult, but it felt way more serious. The greens weren't particularly wild, there was none of P.B Dye's crazyiness. Inniscrone felt like it was trying too hard, and I didn't enjoy that.

The 14th green

I'm not going to do a full hole by hole tour, partly because I don't think the course is worth the time, and partly because I've already gone on a bit here. So we'll just hit the highlights (and lowlights).

The 7th from the fairway.

The third hole is a genuinely good short par 4. 310 yards, but driver is definitely not the club you want to hit. It's way better to lay up just short of the bunkers in the wide portion of the fairway, which will leave you with a better angle and a longer target to hit. It's a good birdie opportunity if you're not an idiot and forget how to hit an 80 yard wedge shot (ahem).

Even from position A, it's still not a particularly easy second though.

The 3rd looks pretty good from the tee.

Unfortunately, the next two holes let the side down quite a lot. The fourth hole is a long, narrow par 4 that doglegs to the left with trees and a stream left, and a line of trees right. Plus, there's a couple of fairway bunkers on the left side. There's not much forgiveness on the second either, the green is small and there's a steep slope falling away from the green left.

Next comes the fifth hole. If you remember my Piney Apple review, you may remember I classified the fourteenth there as an "Oh crap, we're out of room but we only have 17 holes what do we do?" hole. And you know what? It's a silly mistake, but it wasn't a big deal for that course. But the fifth at Inniscrone is one of these holes as well, and it's really at that this point that I realized that this wasn't a good golf course. I can forgive a screwed up routing at a cheap, basic golf course, but here? I know it was his first course, but Gil Hanse should have known better. When you walk off the fourth green, you'll notice that there are two sets of tees pointing in two different directions, but there is no other green in sight. What you do is play a tiny little downhill par 3 crammed into a corner, then when you finish, walk (or drive) right back up the hill past the tee box you just hit from to get to the sixth tee, which is right next to the fifth tee. It's not even a good hole we're talking about here. It's a miniscule hole, semi-blind, to a small green backed by dense undergrowth. There are no bunkers, the green is boring and surrounded in shadow, so the grass grows poorly. I can't believe this is the best Gil Hanse could do. It's an awful hole, routed horribly.

This is actually from a more forward set of tees. The back tees on the fourth are across a valley to the left.

The approach to the 4th isn't easy either.

The 5th hole is really, really squeezed in.

The eighth hole is, I believe, a sort of Redan, and a long one at that. Not that I played it anywhere close to correctly, but, it's there. There's the deep front bunker, the green and fairway slope in the appropriate way, it's all very nice. I wish I could have played it sort of correctly, but I was having a less than successful day with the woods and the irons, so, all the strategy was wasted on me.

The eighth features a very tough tee shot.

The eleventh hole is, for me anyway, the best hole on the course. A nice looking, pleasant par 3 of about 160 yards. A short iron is all you need. There's some trouble, but it's still a fairly inviting target.

The eleventh from the tee.

The thirteenth is notable because of the big tree behind the green. It's called...the Inniscrone Tree! Creative. It doesn't look too impressive until you get closer, since that's when you notice just how big the trunk is. This white oak dates back to 1643. That's a pretty old tree, especially for this area. Other than that, it's not a very interesting hole.

The thirteenth fairway. This isn't the interesting bit.

The Inniscrone tree is left and behind the green.The rest of the hole isn't very interesting either.

The fifteenth has a central fairway bunker. It doesn't come into play, but hey, it's there. The hole is a short par 5, and the green is designed so that a low running draw would work very well. Which is very nice, but it's here most of all that the drenched nature of the course takes away from any sort of quality the holes have. This would be a better hole if it had been drier.

That bunker doesn't do much. It's too close to the tee to be much worry.

A low draw should work well here, if the course was less wet.

The sixteenth has a lot of elevation change, going down and up and down and back up. When the hole was first built there was a very intimidating looking waste bunker short left of the green in what is basically a big pit. But that's been grassed over, and now it's just rough, which is a nod to the realities of public golf, but is also not very interesting.

At least the houses didn't dictate the routing at this course.

The sixteenth green, hidden behind a hump.

The seventeenth is without question the hardest hole on the course. The tee shot is very similar to the one on the fourth, over a stream and native area with trees on both sides of the fairway. It even doglegs in the exact same fashion. This hole is longer though, so instead of a short iron, you'll need a mid to long iron to a green which isn't small, but is surrounded by places you don't want to be. Left is dead, and right leaves you with a severe sidehill lie. Best strategy? From the back, it's 475 yards, so just treat it as a par 5. I wasn't hitting very long, so that's what I did. And you know what? I made a 4.

You don't need a picture of the view from the back tee on the fourth. It's basically this.

The fairway short is probably the best option

The eighteenth has three bunkers cutting perpendicular to the line of play across the fairway. The hill your drive ends up on was somehow, at 2:30 in the afternoon, the wettest part of the course. I hit my ball into the rough a few yards off the fairway, and it was a struggle to find because the grass was insanely lush and the ball had plugged. The second is a wedge to an undefended green. Not a good finishing hole, even in the best of times.

Not a great finishing hole.

Since I've already been pretty clear that I did not enjoy this golf course, I don't think we need too exhaustive a review at the end. Even if I was in the area, I wouldn't play here again. There must be someplace more enjoyable than this. Or, failing that, someplace less swampy. It's a good thing I only spent $40 here, if it had been like most upscale public courses it would have been twice that, and that would have been a huge rip-off. $40 isn't awful. I wouldn't pay it, but $40 for a round of golf at a course with 18 holes, fairways, greens, the works is, for most people, an acceptable amount to pay. Just remember the mushroom smell. Maybe you like mushrooms, and you'll enjoy the pungent aroma of the mushroom farm wafting across the golf course.