Black Birch Golf Club

Good place to come and play, friendly staff, course is challenging and the price is right.

Black Birch, formerly Banner, is set in bucolic Moodus, with decent elevation changes, yet still easily walkable. The first few holes are wide, allowing you to tune your driver and recover an errant stroke. Then the blind dogleg # 5 challenges you as does the uphill #8, across from the pond with the warning "Kraken" (snake). The back nine tightens up, rewarding accurate and long drives. While the fairways unfortunately have late summer crabgrass, the greens are in excellent condition with the bunkers raked, filled with characteristically hard packed sand. The course has improved over the years and its layout is still appealing. The 19th hole bar is closed this season, but on weekends, a refreshments cart circulates the course to keep you hydrated. Dave, club manager, is always a gracious and friendly host.

Your course is a great value, really could have used some water on the course. I really wanted to go into the pro shop at the 9th but we had people playing behind us. No cooler policy would be fine if there was beverages available on the course.

I will stand by the review I wrote seven weeks ago, rating this course five stars; it was rounded up from 4.2, but part of how I evaluate is based on a holistic feeling about the general experience, rather than using a rigid mathematical formula in each case. Some of that ‘rounding’ was predicated on the continuous improvement that Black Birch was continuing to make, and indeed, the course was in fairly good condition—I rated it ‘average’ then, staying on the conservative side.

For the first summer season in the five or six years I have been coming here, the course has regressed significantly, and over this past month in particular. Today, on Sunday (!) the fairways appeared as if they had not been cut for several days; they were verging on what most courses would call ‘rough.’ Further still, a crabgrass infestation has continued unabated. It had begun to grow, in my recollection, in mid-June (perhaps earlier), but the main point is that nothing has been done to address it. While the course certainly looks green, it is, clearly, too much to ask for golfers to play shots from crabgrass when they pitch to greens, or hit from preferred landing zones in fairways. Not only has the crabgrass infiltrated these areas; it is now leaking into the fringes, and not being weeded out.

True, the greens are essentially fine. Earlier in the year they were better, however, and even today it seemed they were a bit shaggy and, like the fairways, uncut, whereas they should be--regularly. The bunkers, too come in for criticism. On hole two, the long par-4, I pulled a 9-iron into the left greenside trap. Taking my normal shallow cut of sand, the result was abnormal: the ball rocketed up and over the green (and this green is relatively wide!). It was clear that the soft part of the sand, above the bunker’s base, was minimal; hence my screaming mishit. Just to retest, I hit a practice shot on a greenside bunker at hole 8; the results were fine and the ball flew high and landed softly, pin-high. The inconsistency may stem from a simple lack of general or periodic maintenance. It does appear that the surfaces of both bunkers were machine-raked very recently, but that was clearly not enough for the 3rd-hole bunker. And this was not the first time I’ve had this experience over the last month. The bunkers are also growing scattered weeds across their surfaces. Not good. Finally, the tees have not progressed as I’m sure the course manager or superintendent had been hoping. One has to wonder how much money, if any, has been budgeted to the 7th tee, still in the same state of disrepair as it was when I played it in late June, and still closed. The much smaller, somewhat makeshift tee positioned thirty yards in front is chewed up as a result. Using this tee, hole 7 is a par-4; it can only be called a very marginal 5-par at some 440 yards. The other project that should be complete, but has languished, is the improvement to the new fairway at hole 13. The grass is still sparse in the landing zone, the fairway patchy overall.

Taken cumulatively, these are ominous developments. Perhaps I caught the course on a bad day, you may say, but I’ve played here continuously enough this summer to see a subtle pattern of erosion, now really leaving its mark, in course conditioning. The layout is still a pleasure to negotiate, especially the challenging Al Zikorus-designed backside. Still, I can’t see playing genuine matches here against a serious player. The course is still fine for the majority of players, with the reservations I’ve enumerated. Until the course owners take conditioning seriously, they cannot expect public course golfers to be beating a path to the course and its clubhouse, which, by the way, has seen its restaurant closed this year.

I agree with the great Tom Watson, who long ago said (I’m paraphrasing him) that American golfers have a tendency to obsess a bit too much about course conditions. Like Watson, I am not a conditioning freak. What Watson was clearly suggesting, in other words, was that too many golfers set their expectations for ‘great conditioning’ unrealistically. He did not mean, however, that sub-standard conditioning was OK or even acceptable.

Unfortunately, the conditions at Black Birch have dropped, over the course of a summer that has not seen great weather/temperature extremes, to marginally unacceptable levels. Golf is definitely not the same game without at least some reasonable conditioning standards, standards that are routinely met every day, week, and month of the season. The owner(s) needs to address this, or perhaps sell the course to someone who is more golf-savvy and far less indifferent.

The last few yrs. the course was on an upswing. They were trying to upgrade it but with the closing of the bar and the failed auction the course is failing fast. The endless crabgrass even makes finding your ball difficult. The greens are not bad (but slow) but nobody goes there and easy to see it is in big trouble. Honestly, the $25 is high for what it is. What shame.

Played here today for my first time. The staff was very nice and were very welcoming to a new face. I played all 18 holes with a cart in 2 hours for $25. The tee boxes were pretty destroyed but other than that there were no other parts of the course that were in bad shape. The grass is not traditional golf course grass it is like playing out of the rough from every shot.

Definitely recommend this course! It was a fun course to play it challenged me for sure. It is a great course to work on your recovery skills. NOT a course to walk.

This course is underrated and a good value for the money. The staff is very pleasant and helpful.

BB is a nice average reasonably priced course. In fact ...it can be a real bargain. Great place to work on your game. Miss Jack's Place being open. Hope they find a buyer.

Staff was friendly, the course appears to have been improved for the better based on past reviews.

Greens are well kept and course was in good condition. Not terribly difficult layout, but allows for enough challenge.

For the greens fee, it's hard to find another course to enjoy a round of golf and have fun.

Black Birch Golf Club is classic parkland test of golf and a tale of two nines: the front features open, rolling and spacious fairways, the back, by contrast, has tighter, woodland-cut holes requiring a bit more precision and finesse. Virtually all of it is good, interesting, and quite demanding golf. The layout features a variety of pleasant scenes, most notably the farmland adjacent to holes number five and six, the quiet ponds occupied by geese and filled with marshy reeds, and the sprinkling of beautifully open, sometimes even field-like golf holes. The entire course is blessed with excellent golf terrain, and nearly every hole maximizes it, especially because all eighteen blend naturally with their undulating terrain, and are characterized by their variety of hazards and hills.

This course opens with a pair of modest, par-four challengers, hole number one sweeping down a precipitous hill and over a small pond to a broad landing area, from which only a short iron/wedge is needed, and hole number two rising thirty feet to a plateau fairway, beginning 175 yards from the tee, with a landing zone making uneven lies and stances the rule, and so complicating the approach to a tilting and semi-blind green, whose right flank is protected by a gaping bunker—clearly hidden from fairway viewing. Demanding a full-blooded drive to its semi-blind downhill fairway, the third hole, however, fully challenges you, hindering direct approaches to its green by scattered, mature trees, punishing wayward approaches with a sizeable pair of greenside bunkers. It may seem small consolation, if this tough hole has jumped up to grab you, that the green is large and flat here.

The par-four fourth’s green, by contrast, is two-tiered and sloping, its surface perched thirty feet above the fairway, requiring a precisely struck approach shot following on the heels of what should be a solid drive, a drive which has found its way uphill to an open landing zone. Hitting a short iron or wedge from an elevated tee is the fifth hole's order of business, but one must negotiate two large and deep, Ross-style traps—front and back—to hit the target, a moderately-sized green that pitches downhill, away from the tee. The 480-yard sixth hole is a short par-five standout: Its tree-lined fairway begins moving straightaway, then doglegs gently left, and finally, over the last hundred yards, swings back right to its destination, a green positioned at 45 degrees to this last leg of fairway and defended by a yawning bunker which leaves only a small opening to its extreme right. Curiously, the shape and angularity of this fairway makes it an uncanny ringer, in these respects, for H. S. Colt’s #17 at Muirfield (the great course in Scotland, not Ohio), putting it in some very good company. For big hitters wanting to reach in two from the right side, playing number six will require some careful calculations on the approach—if, that is, the pesky right side copse of trees is to be avoided. Similar calculations are necessary on the brawnier par-five seventh, but mainly on the second shot over a large pond, as the field-like fairway—defended only lightly by a few scattered, right-side trees—is both generous and beautiful on this most scenic, but frequently punishing, hole. Big hitters may be able to muscle the second onto the green in two when the wind is low or favorable. The green is situated on a tall plateau that frequently rejects all but the true and powerfully struck approach (from long-range), and it rises upward from front to back, making chipping testy from its back and sides. Hole eight, a handsome but comparatively tame downhill par-three, usually requires a short or mid-iron to a large, receptive green, a green closely flanked by a pair of magnetic, frontal bunkers and ringed in the back by mature trees.

Acquiring a truly claustrophobic feel by contrast to the previous eight, the ninth hole sprawls uphill to its strongly canted green, via a bumpy fairway surrounded by woods and water, although the latter only comes into play with ten yards off the fairway on the right. Played indifferently, this hole may become a card-wrecker, especially because three-putting becomes a distinct possibility when your first putt is played outside of fifteen feet.

As if to make the transition virtually seamless between front and back nine, Architect Al Zikorus (who added these backside holes in 1965), created #10 to be a tight and fairly tough 480-yard, slightly uphill par five, its densely wooded perimeter hemming in your three shots from tee to green, its slopes dropping down on the left side, especially, into woods that swallow up errant shots. Here, too, the raised and narrow green is fronted by a large, U-shaped bunker that sweeps around to its left flank; when missed, your approach shot either finds this bunker or, elsewhere, is trundled down a steep slope to an endpoint where you are unlikely to get up-and-down without Mickelsonian skills. It seems an attractive par-five for the masochistic. Number eleven, a pretty downhill par-four, provides a wide-open driving area to a fairway that nonetheless hugs the woods on the left, perhaps letting up a bit on you with its more forgiving green, yet thrashing any errant shots that travel short-left (big bunker), long (down-slope) or well left (deep woods). The short twelfth should seem, typically, a routine hole for those golfers with sound and predictable ball striking talents. For others, unable to precisely place their drives in the fairway that doglegs strongly to the right, unable to thereby skirt the large line of right-side trees, unable to accurately flight (usually with a mid-iron) their approaches onto the correct level of the green while so avoiding its massive left-side trap, this hole will be anything but easy.

Redesigned as it was a few years ago, the 393-yard thirteenth hole should have been improved, but its too-narrow driving area is overly demanding, exacerbated by a huge and steep gully on the right which unfairly gobbles up marginally missed drives (Hasta la vista, my wayward Titleist!). The approach to this green has also been made awkward by a too-tight line of massive trees on the left, along with a green too small for this long par-four's large scale. Fortunately, things rebound immediately with the challenging, eminently fair and number one index hole, the fourteenth, a 420- yard classic bruiser, handicap index 1, that includes stately woods on the right, terraced fall-offs on the left, two guardian bunkers that side the green, and other problems around it. Arguably, this is the best hole on the golf course, and certainly the hardest on which to earn a par.

The rest of home stretch on this course is quite solid, even though the 172-yard downhill fifteenth is a bit tame around the green, perhaps a hole meant to give players a breather after the previous two, but it is still a beauty that fairly glitters (in green) amidst a beautiful natural setting and forest backdrop, part of which are aquatic plants within a marsh at the base of its dell between tee and green. This hole requires well-struck short or mid-iron over that hollow—along with two careful putts—for par. The 498-yard sixteenth continues to keep the blood moving in your veins, as your tee shot must be well-struck to negotiate the fairway-spanning, reed-filled pond to touch down on its tree-lined fairway some thirty yards wide. This par-five further wends its way through forest, and for those big-hitters hoping to arrive at the green on the second of two powerful blows, a large cross-bunker, situated twenty yards before the green, will present a formidable obstacle. To complicate matters on both the final approach and the putting surface itself, the green tilts front to back and left-to-right. Hole seventeen is both the toughest and best one-shotter at Black Birch, playing ‘longer’ than its 150 yards to a green sitting atop a sizeable hill and guarded on its left flank by a large, steep-faced trap. The green’s opening on the right is a mere nine yards, and its modest proportions make it an elusive target, although bowl-like contours prevent many over-hit shots from running down the rear embankment. At the par-four eighteenth, the bank nine ends with a small bang, not a whimper, and you must bang your drive down the fairway’s left side, ideally, as several mature trees guard the fairway’s right side, often foiling or complicating approach shots for those who have veered too far right. Amply protected, the green is surrounded by a bevy of largish hazards. Nonetheless the putting surface itself is large and fairly flat, and a well-struck iron may well find you eyeing, happily, a birdie putt.

The course conditioning has been bettered remarkably over the last four years by the intensive work of Mr. Youngman Oh, the very astute greenskeeper here, who has been responsible for the revitalization of the entire course, especially upgrading entire green complexes (now excellent) and tees (ranging from average to good). The fairways are far from ideal, but they are playable, often lush in most of the landing areas. As for the pro shop staff, Dave and Keith, along with everyone else, are among the most polite, unpretentious, and fair-minded ‘golf people’ I’ve met, which is quite a compliment considering that I’ve walked into more than 300 clubhouses over my lifetime, ranging from elite country clubs to municipal and public courses across the United States and the British Isles.

Black Birch may be something of a sleeper, but it is well worth playing for all golfers, as well as an excellent value.

Tee boxes in bad shape. Fairways are lawn grass at their best. Greens were ok, just a little slow. Good course for beginners to practice some swings at but serious players will want better quality.

Golfnow hot deal $1 a hole. Play here once a year with my son for amusement and tradition. Staff is great. I'm a 24 and this course always gets me. Tee boxes meh but greens are good. A good golfer will love the challenge especially on the back nine. Not worth more than $25 IMO

It was a great course for the price, it has its ups and downs, but every green was well manicured, the fairways are a little bit thick but nice scenery and not too narrow. Overall I really enjoyed this course and will definitely be back.

Overall layout is good. Most tee boxes for white tees good. There are no blue tee boxes. Greens are a bit beat u with ball marks, but playable Bunkers have very little to no sand in them. Definitely worth the price

Course is really poor condition! Restaurant closed for the season! Probably will be looking for another course to play. Too bad, nice layout. Seems like ownership has given up on maintaining the course.

Black Birch is a well kept secret. If you enjoy playing early in the morning and having the course to yourself then this is your place! Management has made many improvements over the years and continue to do so...are there areas for improvement like better drainage and dry patches? -Yes. But it is a great value and you'll have just as much enjoyment and saving $$$. Support Black Birch Golf!