Hop Brook Golf Course

This is a fantastic 9 hole course and is a great bang for your buck. The scenery is beautiful…. I especially like walking across the bridge to the first tee box as i get to enjoy the sound of the flowing brook it passes over. The staff both in the pro-shop and on the maintenance team are cordial, knowledgeable and helpful…. They’re all good for a joke or in answering your general questions.

The course conditions are professionally kept unlike many other municipal 9 holes in the area and consist of nice lush disease free grass, and generally plays to a thicker cut rough which requires you to really assess your shots. The greens are some of the best in the state consisting of plenty of undulations and grain divergence, making every shot onto the green and putt towards the cup unique. If you want to work on your short game or practice reading greens this is the perfect place to do it.

The course itself offers two very different layouts from the front 5 to the back 4. The first 5 holes utilize more sloping in the fairways to navigate around where the back 4 plays much more flat with differing doglegs. This front back difference is best reflected when comparing the two par 3 holes being the 5th and 7th. The 5th hole plays downhill about 160 yards with the front half of the green being a blind shot, whereas the latter if a straight shot about 180 yards with two mounds and a sand trap directly in front of the green, requiring you to float your ball over trouble. The course also offers a fantastic putting green which is large and consistent with the play style of the greens on the course.

I also appreciate the fact that the course pays its respects to a CT old-timer and Naugatuck local Billy Burke, a pga pro who was the first player to win a major (1931 US Open) using steel shafts in an infamous 72 hole bout followed by an additional 72 playoff holes. Check it out you wont regret it.

Pro shop looked like it was about to collapse, but was usable. Parking was a bit awkward. I did not go into the restaurant. The greens, fairways and bunkers were in very good condition except for hole 9, which was being plugged, so was awkward. I accomplished to knock off another item on my bucket list by playing there. Now I've played over 120 courses in CT!!!!

Love playing this little course. The staff is always great and it’s usually in good shape. I have noticed the pace of play is painfully slow. They really need a ranger to push people along. Other than that it’s a great time. The restaurant in the same parking lot is great

We travel about 35 mins to come play hop Brook. The course is in very good conditions considering the summer we’ve had this year.

The course has seen better days. The rough grass is equivalent to my backyard grass, and there are dead patches on the fairways. but was a cute little course with small fast greens. No one was rushing you to finish, even though we finished the 9 in sub 2 hours. A good course for beginners, as there were a lot of high handicap golfers out there.

Considering most of Connecticut is in a drought, Hop Brook is in excellent condition. The fairways, tee boxes, greens and rough are lush green. The sand traps were up above average for where I normally play. This course has 9 unique holes that are enjoyable to play.

Hop Brook is a 9-holer with variety, on one end being a flattish course (holes six through nine), on the other a more rugged set of holes, but also more forested. The layout also gives you two challenging and utterly different par-3’s, along with a pair of five-pars that play as near opposites: the first hole straight away but with a cross-hazard in the form of a pond, along with a plateau green; the sixth a parkland, doglegging hole not far from the rushing brook. Possibly the best par-4 on the course, the eighth’s fairway doglegs and rolls with small undulations all the way to the green, which, you’ll find, is hidden from sight when you’re on the fairway. The second, to my mind, is also a fine par-3, and features a swale down the fairway, while the third’s green boasts some impressive Golden Age contouring. Hop Brook is also amply bunkered, tight enough to scare you on some holes (with mature trees bordering the fairways), and rolling enough around and on the greens to keep you engaged on nearly every shot. Overall, the layout is not tough, but it’s fun to hit a driver on many of the holes because you have the airspace for it.

I played this course long ago, and can assure you that it has been nicely upgraded over that span of several decades, most notably by the addition of longer and better tee boxes. It’s nice to see excellent conditioning here in almost every phase. The greens were outstanding and ran quite fast. The only flaw I found were some bald patches in a couple of the roughs, though the scope was limited. I found the sheer density of the roughs in greenside areas very trying, and they made short chips and pitches a bit exasperating at times. But I’d rather see “too dense” in the roughs than “too sparse.” I’m not a fan of hole four, with its steeply elevated, hump-backed fairway that puts a premium on a very straight drive, but others may find this sort of challenge to their liking.

Service is excellent and friendly at HB, and the gentleman manning the pro shop today (I’ve met him before) represents this golf course as well as can be done. Pro shop prices are reasonable.

It was nice to see the memorial stone–on the path that leads to check-in–that memorializes the 1931 U.S. Open champion Billy Burke (originally Burkowski), who hailed from Naugatuck. Also today, I greatly enjoyed the company of my playing partner, who likes returning to Hop Brook among his other favored courses in the greater Waterbury area.

Bottom Line:

Hop Brook is a strong value and a solid bet for consistency; they pay attention to details here. I would confidently recommend it to anyone.