The Hills Course, Community Golf Course, Dayton, Ohio

Once we decided to return to our home area of Dayton, Ohio Denny told me he'd like to play two area golf courses; WGC in Xenia and Community Golf Course in Kettering, Ohio.  Last week he played WGC so this week it was time to check Community off his list.  My compression fractures in my spine are still not healed, so I went along to play golf cart driver and flag tender.  Community Golf Course is one of Dayton's three municipal golf courses and has thirty six holes; the "outer" course of The Hills and the "inner" course of The Dales.  This is an older golf course but we were surprised to find that management has added some water features in the fifteen-plus years since we've played the golf course.  Since it is a city course both the Hills and Dales receive a lot of play but the course is in amazingly good shape this year.  Apparently having access to city water for irrigation helps.

The yardage from the longest, blue tees is 6304 with a rating/slope of 70.1/127.  The white tees (called the senior tees here) have a yardage of 5877 with a rating/slope of 68.2/122.  The yellow women's tees have a yardage of 5187 with a rating/slope of 70/123.  Prices to play eighteen holes during the week are $36 with a riding cart or $30 with a riding cart for singles.  I was charged $14 just to ride along with Denny which we thought was a bit steep.  We joined up at the first hole with a gentleman who was walking and offered to take his golf bag with us on the cart because the outer course does have a lot of hills.  A lot of hills.

The layouts here on both the Hills course and the Dales courses are pretty open, relying more on elevation changes and hillside slopes as challenges rather than with the usage of water hazards or sand traps.  Over the last couple of years there have been some strong straight line winds come through the area so a fair number of trees have been removed from the golf course. 

If you normally hit a pretty straight ball, you're going to have a lot of fun on this golf course.

It's hard to tell from standing at the tee box but this is the infamous "Suicide Hill" for snow sledders; steep and full of humps it sent many a sledder to the hospital over the years until the city finally put a stop to the sledding here.

The seventeenth hole boasts a new pond.

Community Golf Course is located next to Hills and Dales Park with its statue of NCR (National Cash Register) founder John Patterson.  

The City of Dayton also operates Madden Golf Course and Kitty Hawk Golf Course.  Kitty Hawk has two regulation eighteen hole golf courses and an executive golf course.  Denny and I have played Madden and Kitty Hawk also and can recommend both if you're in the area.  Actually, the Dayton area has many good golf courses that are very reasonably priced, especially if you sign up for the ubiquitous online e-mail discounts offered by most golf courses nowadays.  I'm sorry to have to have missed this one.