85-year-old Galloping Hill lives up to its name, especially on wide-open Saturdays

By Chris Baldwin,
Contributor

KENILWORTH, N.J. - By the time you're on the second fairway, looking up at the flag, looking much farther up than you expected, you realize you've been had. Galloping Hill Golf Course isn't the pushover that its county-owned status and right-off-the-Garden State Parkway approach leads most to believe.

Sure, the 133 slope rating from the back tees is right there on the barebones stark white scorecard for everyone to read. But how many times have slope ratings turned out to be mere fanciful hype, especially at a county course?

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If you go

18 Hole at Galloping Hill Golf Course

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Galloping Hill Rd
Union, New Jersey 07083
Union County

Phone(s): (908) 686-1556

 

18 Holes | Public golf course | Par: 71 | 6160 yards | ... details »

 

Also see these nearby courses:

• 9 Hole at Galloping Hill Golf Course
• Suburban Golf Club
• Roselle Golf Club
• Maplewood Country Club
• Hyatt Hills Golf Complex

No way you're taking that scorecard slope rating as gospel. Only now that you left your drive woefully short off a tee box that only measures 341 yards from the pin but plays about 40 yards longer on a straight uphill, you've suddenly found respect for this unassuming county course.

Soon, you'll discover they weren't joking when they called it Galloping Hill. This isn't the stuff of "The Englishman Who Went Up a Hill and Came Down a Mountain." Or maybe it is.

For Galloping Hill doesn't include any one monster hill; it's just a seemingly endless succession of decent hills. Up, down, up, down, up, down. One hole you're scaling. The next you're descending. By the time you get to No. 15, even New Jersey natives are confessing they never knew the Garden State had so many damn hills.

It's enough to make you appreciate old-school design. Even forgotten old-school design. Galloping Hill architect Willard Wilkinson is no household blast from the past, but he knew a little something about making a golf course that lasts when he mapped out this track in 1920.

More than eight decades later, Galloping Hill is still a challenging, fun play. You're confronted with anything but the ordinary lie here again and again.

"It gives you different looks," said Tom Parhn, who came up about 17 exists (17 miles for the Garden State Parkway unfamiliar) to check out Wilkinson's works. "It's not a flat course like three fourths of New Jersey courses."

"It gives you uphill, downhill, hook lie cut shots and vice versa. A lot of different looks, man."

These looks will probably come on your feet. Galloping Hill almost demands you walk the course with its ridiculous $26 cart fee (more than half the full-rate, primetime greens fee).

Of course, walking seems like a gimmie given back at the clubhouse. When you thought it was just another county course. Before you got a load of hill after hill after hill.

Still hoofing it and getting the pull-cart workout remains the best way to experience this old course. The holes are close enough together to make the hill marches the only real chore and there's something camaraderie building about being out there with a bunch of other unsuspecting walkers.

To think you only gave Galloping Hill a try as a Saturday afternoon fallback. That's the thing those in the know know about Galloping Hill.

In a metro New York area where a weekend tee time is more sought after than a model's phone number, Galloping Hill is often wide open late Saturday afternoon. It's walk right up and tee off. It turns out the older characters who frequent this course aren't about to miss the early-bird dinner special.

"It's the only course where you can get a same day Saturday afternoon tee time," said golfer John Blum of nearby Bayonne."Not one of a few, the only."

This is no sad man's sagging fallback. Galloping Hill is in decent shape, better than decent shape for a glorified muni. It's not the green of the lawn of your annoying neighbor who's trying to win some mythical best yard on the block title, but the lies are more than fair.

And the rough, while thick and penalizing, isn't more than four inches tall anywhere. You cannot blame the upkeep if your score unexpectedly sky rockets.

In fact, Galloping Hill is the kind of course you wish there were more of.

A lot of New Jerseyans are surprised when they see Galloping Hill listed among a slew of other big name smokestack state courses in Golf Digest's "Best-Places to Play." But it turns out this is one Golf Digest got right. Galloping Hill and its wild hills are up to these heights.

Union County officials helped ensure this by pouring some money into the course in recent years to restore its vintage design. It's like everyone finally realized they had a potential jewel in their hands obscured by dirt.

"It's in better shape than it used to be," golfer Debbie Blum said. "You can see they're taking better care of it."

Wilkinson's design shines through much better now that hackers aren't fixated on torn-up patches in the fairways. Holes such as No. 6 - a 556-yard par 5 with a blind tee shot and often a blind second shot (the dips are so severe here, you must run up the hills to see if it's safe to hit) - stand up as inventive, even today.

No. 6 is as well framed a hole as you'll find in any era with the old fashioned little bridge running over one of the forced carries a nice touch.

The toughest stretch of the course is clearly the No. 13 through No. 15 run though: a blind shot par 4, followed up by a daunting uphill par 4 and a dramatic downhill par 3 with an elevated green in the valley. Who says old guys can't take you on a wild ride?

"It's a pretty nice course," Ort Chen of Bergenfield said, still sounding a little disbelieving he found this in a county course. "It seems like it would be a good course for a beginner too with the wide-open fairways ... but those hills can still get to experienced players."

Chen laughed and said his goodbyes. The sun was setting on another group of walk-up Saturday afternoon players at Galloping Hill and all was good in their golf world.

The verdict

At $48 for non Union County residents on weekends and $44 on weekdays, Galloping Hill is no great bargain. But it's a worthy play to check out the 85-year-old design. The ancient well-known courses aren't the only ones capable of giving a history lesson.

Even though Galloping Hill is right off the Garden State Parkway, it's surprising removed with road noises only really audible on two or three holes.

Plus, this being a county-owned course, there aren't any houses right along the track. In fact, a rather large contingent of deer seem to have made their home in a little wooded area between the 10th and 11th holes. The deer stare at golfers with obvious disinterest. That turns into the annoyance of a parent who's been through the kid wars if you send a wayward Titleist into their mist.

Some golfers complain that the greens are much too slow at Galloping Hill. It's true that they don't roll anywhere close to your typical resort course speed, but I found it to be an easy, somewhat fun adjustment to make. Of course, some hackers are more obsessed with Stimpmeter readings than others.

No matter your feeling on the greens, it's difficult to find a better quality course for a Saturday afternoon walk-up tee time in the metro New York area. Our round came in at about four hours and 30 minutes, the equivalent of supersonic speed golf in this area.

"Every time we've been here we've zipped right along," Debbie Blum said.

Don't expect the same in the heart of the day. This is a twilight thing, one of the quirks that makes Galloping Hill so charming.

Places to stay

The Hyatt Regency New Brunswick ((732) 873-1234) is one of the better hotel options in the area. It puts you in the heart of a decent downtown college scene (Rutgers University) and there are number of golf courses within 15 minutes drive. Your choices in accommodations are limited here, though.

A better bet is to use Princeton as your base for a New Jersey golf trip. This charming, if sometimes pretentious, town has options like the Doral Forrester Conference Center & Spa ((800) 222-1131). It's surrounded by 25 acres of woodlands, giving you something of a nature feel while being halfway between the bustling hubs of Philadelphia and New York.

Places to eat

Niecy's ((973) 275-1770) offers traditional Southern cooking a few exits up for the Parkway in South Orange. It's a BYOB, meaning more savings for you to spend on golf.

Going about six exits the other direction (south) on the Garden State will put you in Metuchen, a town with a charming but small downtown. Unless you're with kids who want Superman ice cream at the good old style parlor on Main Street, go a little farther down the road to Café Abbraci ((732) 348-6077). This place actually used to be a biker bar, but now it serves the most inventive food in town (Metuchen's not that inventive, but it's still good).

Fast fact

Many golfers in the area simply refer to Galloping as The Hill.

If you go

Galloping Hill Golf Course
N. 31st St.
Kenilworth, N.J.
Web site: unioncountynj.org/svcsgov/
parksrec/golf.htm#galloping
Tee times: (908) 686-1556

June 29, 2005

Chris Baldwin keeps one eye on the PGA Tour and another watching golf vacation hotspots and letting travelers in on the best place to vacation.

Any opinions expressed above are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of the management.