Disappointed and Would Not Return My son and I stopped at Ohio University Golf Course while traveling from Illinois to North Carolina, hoping for a quick and enjoyable round. While the practice greens looked promising, the actual course was in very poor shape. The rough was severely overgrown, and the bunkers were dried out and overrun with weeds—clearly not maintained for quite some time. We paid for 18 holes, only to realize mid-round that it’s just a 9-hole course. No refund was offered, nor was there any gesture to make up for the experience. The front desk staff were polite, but it’s clear the issue lies with whoever is managing course upkeep. With basic maintenance, this could be a decent budget course. Until that happens, I’d recommend skipping it. I wouldn’t return unless they paid me to play.

Wish I could give zero stars. Played the course with my 3 adult children. My daughter is a student at the university. Absolute disaster of a course. If you miss the fairway by 2 feet you will not find your ball because the native growth is so overgrown. The Bunkers were either full of water or bare dirt not sand. Some greens are just dirt as well. Horrible horrible course. The university should be embarrassed to have their name associated with something that awful.

Fun 9 hole layout with potential. Still maybe the only golf course I've ever seen where you can hit a tee shot over a real, natural river (the Hocking). Greens are in good shape. I'm enjoying the recent changes as a somewhat more seasoned player, but I can see how newer players would be frustrated as theres almost no room for a big miss anymore with the new native areas. Kind of weird though, they basically redid the entire course but not the bunkers, they are still terrible as ever. In my opinion, OU is sitting on/missing a big opportunity, theres almost no public golf in the region but there is definitely demand, especially since covid. Golf is obviously an afterthought for the university, and really disappointing closing the driving range as theres now with no public driving range within 40 minutes of Athens. Thank god they found a good superintendent last year, at least.

Played the course this afternoon and it is a mess. The grass on the fairways is thin or nonexistent. Tee boxes are worse. Devoid of grass on 90% of them. The native grasses in the rough are out of control (those have to be maintained for healthy growth, btw - not just left to lay over and build up dead organic material year after year). Cart paths were in terrible shape and need repaving in many places. The putting greens are disastrously mismanaged with bald spots and inconsistency of roll. Looked like they had not been cut in 3 days. I will say that, my father taught me to fix a ball mark when I was 8, and he and I always played by the gesture of fix your damage and two others on every green. However, I could have wasted my day repairing every ball mark on the 1st green. The other 8 were just as bad. Lazy golfers have to own some of that major discrepancy. If you’re not fixing ball marks you are intentionally part of the problem. FIX YOUR BALL MARKS!!! It takes all of 6 seconds to pull the four sides up and tamp it smooth. What saves this course from a one-star rating is the routing. The bones are here of a great layout - tough and challenging to many levels of player. Just need a better crew caring for it. The framework has lots of character, but she looks like she’s made the “walk-of-shame” for one too many Saturday mornings. As someone who has designed, built and maintained high-profile courses in Ohio and North Carolina, it’s a shame this course has fallen on hard times. The university needs to close the course temporarily, and get a plan/crew in place who knows how to rescue this course from the ranks of a downtrodden muni.

Fairways and greens are in pretty good shape but any ball hit outside the fairway is severely penalized by heavy primary rough and encroaching native areas. The expanded native areas virtually guarantee a lost ball and have eliminated any safe bailout areas even around the greens. The bunkers remain unplayable - several are water traps after any amount of rain. There is very little margin of error for any errant ball. Given the number of students and locals that play the course this all contributes to slower play and a frustrating round of golf. It is pretty clear that anyone that manages the course does not play golf. Used to love playing here but the native areas and rough are too penalizing for the average golfer to enjoy any more!