will be in Marion, OH tomorrow because a friend of my wife is getting married...rehearsal dinner is tomorrow night, so they're doing girl crap all day tomorrow, so I am looking for a good place to play golf...didn't know the scarlet course at oSU was private until last night...kinda bummed about that...looks like a beast of a course. looking for something thats a real challenge to play, something long (7000+) and hard...any public courses in the area live up to that standard? Thanks in advance!

Im a member at Scarlet. I can get you guys on but its $70 per person guest fees. Let me check what i have going on and ill let you know. What time were you guys trying to play.

If the Scarlet course doesn't work I think that Longaberger is in the vicinity of Columbus somewhere, and it is supposed to be a great course, and one of (if not the) best public course in Ohio.

Longaberger is about an hour and a half outside of Columbus. Great course though. Northstar Golf Resort is another long course and its north of Columbus which is closer to Marion. Its the 2nd longest course in Ohio at 7531 yards, behind Muirfield.

Pm me if you want to do Scarlet though. I can work it in. Not many tee times left though for tomorrow.

I played Longaberger 2x last fall. It was a cold couple days when we were there, but the course is great, the holes are very spread out and no houses out there, which I liked. BTW, I think it is very cool of you, Kush614, to work to get your fellow member on Scarlet tomorrow!

I just wanted to post on this, I appreciate all the quick responses...you guys are awesome. Big thanks to Kush for offering, but I just had to send him a PM to say I think I'd be too tight on time...didn't realize that my wife needs me to get her to the rehearsal for the wedding...apparently nobody else in the town is heading that way and could give her a lift oh well...I might try northstar since its a little closer...thanks for the heads up on that one kush...I'll throw a post up on here to let you guys know how it goes if I make it out there. Thanks again fellas!

If you go to Northstar let me know how it was. I haven't heard from anyone who's played there and I'm thinking of going in a couple weeks.

Northstar is great. If you've ever played Cooks Creek, its very much the same type design only longer.Tons of lakes and some good elevation changes. Very good course for being still fairly new. They have all kinds of different holes that incorporate links and tree-lined type courses. Designed by John Cook

I used to live in Westerville (just north of Columbus)....Cook's Creek was my favorite course out there.

Lots of good ones in the Columbus area...

Northstar definitely fits your length requirement. Very nice. Also, get the pretzle appetizer. Trust me on this.

Northstar is great choice. I'll have to try the pretzel appis though!

Thanks. I really like Cooks Creek. I think they've gotten a little expensive, but I really like the course.

well fellas...this was more of a haha thing today. I had a new driver with me for the first time, COMPLETELY different setup than old one (old one was Mizuno MP001 with the NV 65S, 10* loft, new one is a bridgestone J33R 460, "by you" shaft, 65-X, 8.5* loft)...was hoping to adjust quickly, but it took me a few more holes than I would have liked. we were in a bit of a hurry and I let it get to me...basically, played the first 5 holes SIXTEEN OVER, then played the next 10 holes 2 over, then the last 3 holes my wife started in on me about us running late and I hit some more rushed shots. bottom line is i hit a lot of bad shots...in the end, they're all my fault...the 10 hole stretch was a nice relaxing time though.

ANYWAY, about the course...I really liked it. There are some very penalizing misses out there, but for the most part, you have room to miss. The 7500 yards didn't seem like too much...few doglegs here and there, but it was plenty long, just not too long. The blowup holes I had at the beginning had nothing to do with the course being long...hit some really bad shots, and hit some blind shots that I didn't know were into a hazard I'll find time to play it again sometime when I'm up this way. One thing I will say though is I have no idea what it would play like from the normal tees. I think there is about 800 yards difference in them, so I assume it would play very differently.

Last thing, if anyone is interested in the driver differences...my old driver, the shots I absolutely killed, would carry about 280 and roll to about 287-288...pretty consistently, measured with the GPS. I didn't "absolutely kill" any of my drives today with the new one, but a couple of slight misses still went 288-292, and the few I hit the best were between 300-310. I'd have to guess once I get it lengthened an inch and get it "dialed in", its got 320 or so in it, which is perfectly fine by me...was hoping the X shaft would help me straighten it out though...spray a few less...didn't happen much today, but I'll give it a little work.

Sorry for the rambling, just felt like sharing. If anyone wants to know anything else about the course, just ask me. One other thing I would mention is that having played it once and knowing where some blind shots would cause me trouble, I would have cut quite a few shots off that first 5 holes. Overall, really enjoyed the course. Thanks for the advice everyone!

The j33r isn't a real forgiving head but it is super low spin so you should get plenty of roll out and avoid ballooning.

darby creek in marysville is between marion and columbus and is sweet. 7100 yards. the front nine is links style, the back nine is normal american style. the greens have been running really quick this week. i am changing cups tomorrow morning and can make them pretty darn tough if you want

yeah, that was kinda the idea behind me getting it...the other one would spin b/w 4000-4500...kinda ridiculous. I do like it, but its an inch shorter than I need (i'm right at 6'2")...really, I just have to get used to it. By the end of the day I had decided to keep it. Got a pretty good deal on it anyway...used from golfsmith, just the way I described above, condition was 9.5/10, for $40. I could sell it on ebay for more than that easily.

Players Club at foxfire is a great challenging course. Its one of our conference (OCC) courses, really longs and TOUGH greens. One of my favorites is Champions. it used to a country club but the city bought it and its cheap to play and BEAUTIFUL. its the best deal around. and if you find a connection to play at The Lakes Golf & CC in Westerville, its great. play there alot and the service is great (I work in the locker room lol)

oh, and mac94, out that way is also Buck Ridge. my family member owns it, and its pretty nice. Darby Creek is great as well, its another one of the OCC courses

Where is Buck Ridge? I'm not familiar with it.

buck ridge and darby creek are both on the south side of marysville.

the Buck Ridge address is 17483 Robinson Rd.

on the south side, less than 5 mins away from Darby Creek. my only complaint about it is the sand traps. idk if they got the new clubhouse finished, if so ive been in it while being built, it nice. they had/have a temp trailer clubhouse if its not done.