Knoll East Country Club, The

Its always been kind of a low frills, questionable condition course. Some holes are awesome, and there has been a lot of work done to make it better over the past few years. But a few things bugged me during my round yesterday.

The carts have GPS, and that's great. Using the screen to get a yardage was helpful. But whoever set the "boundaries " for where the carts are allowed/not allowed to go needs to rethink a few things. Yes, the course is very swampy in parts, and carts should not be able to drive near or in them. Our cart was "disabled" multiple times in places that made no sense (cart path?). Once disabled, the cart would stop working and we had to push it to a spot to get it going again. We were warned multiple times (doorbell sound) when we were approaching restricted areas, but we were actually on the cart path, or near the tee box.

This place used to have a great place to grab a bite and a drink, but it was closed. We were lucky to have a few waters with us, but had to ration it on the back 9. It was a warm day, a cold drink and a hot dog would have been nice after 9 holes. When we asked the kid in the starters booth for help at the turn, he said they "might be able to get someone from Knoll West to open the snack bar".

There were kids running the place it seemed. High schoolers as starters, taking payment, and being rangers. None of them were really helpful, the starter seemed overwhelmed at times, really didn't seem to be any adult supervisors around, kinda weird.

The rough was really high in some places, balls were hard to find, really slowing down play. I know there has been a lot of rain, but it shouldn't be so penal when a ball doesn't make the fairways.

The greens were in great shape though, rolled true and all had consistent speed..

I played the West course one time 5 or 6 years ago and was able to book a last minute tee time on the East course on a Sunday. The fairways are in very poor condition. There is broken netting that should be responsible for protecting golfers on many fairways that is going unchecked and in need of repairs. Tee boxes are are mixed, some in good condition and others just uncared for. I fault the course as well as golfers that don't take the time to fill divots that they create. In fairness to the course management, they did provide a mixture at most tee boxes. Many patrons just take the divot and move on without thinking about others that play the course. Fairways are tight and can be dangerous if you don't pay attention to what's happening around you. I had at least 2 instances of balls landing within 20-25 feet of me. This is a good course for those who walk and I am one who walks. I'm sorry, but I probably won't be back as there are too many good choices to golf in northern New Jersey.

Course was way too crowded. It made the pace too slow, waited on nearly every hole. They wouldn't provide a cart because there were "too many out". If there's too many carts out, then there's too many golfers out.

The course was in really bad shape when we played. The tee boxes are way too close to the previous greens so we were hiding from other people's shots all day. The snack back was closed after we finished the front 9 which was also a disappointment. I just wouldn't go here.

If someone from Knoll were to get back to me, I will consider giving a better review once they use my review as constructive criticism. The place could really be great if you just tended to rangering and had starters that care about their job. We were sent out about 45 minutes past our tee time for no reason whatsoever. There were no rain or frost delay issues that day. The starter knows my friend and I are good players and if he starts us late, should know that we want to move quickly to finish our round (bear in mind our tee time was 230pm or so... plenty of time to finish before dark... in theory!). So he ends up putting us with 2 beginners! And, the 2 groups in front of us were beginners! Needless to say, we got only 11 holes in and they had the audacity to ask us to bring the carts in by 630pm which is an hour before dark. Honestly, I'd like a free round or my money back. I will say that the little snack/grill halfway house is excellent with really great grilled dogs and burgers and the greens are always really nice for a short public course. The crews that tend to this course do a great job.