Yes, the world recognizes that this region is the home for clubs like Jack Nicklaus's Muirfield Village, Pete Dye's The Golf Club and Donald Ross's Scioto Country Club - the place where the Golden Bear learned the game as a boy. Here, too, is where golfers such as Nicklaus, Tom Weiskopf and John Cook have donned the scarlet and gray to play for Ohio State University.

Last year, Golf Magazine (through its www.golf.com) and the National Golf Foundation ranked the Columbus area as the second best golf city in the nation, behind only Austin, Texas. The rankings were determined by each city's weather, affordability of green fees, quality of courses, accessibility, numbers of courses designed by esteemed architects, availability and crowdedness. According to the study, Columbus and its metropolitan statistical area sports 66 public courses with a median green fee of $34 per round.

During a three-day blitz of the region in mid-September (a time when the leaves are starting to turn and football rather than golf is in the air), we put three area public tracks to the test. If the other 63 public courses in Central Ohio are as good as the trio we played, it's easy to see why the city got such a high ranking.

Another Look at Hills's Work at Tartan East

Built in 1992, the golf course at the former Winding Hollow Country Club in New Albany reopened in June of this year as the daily-fee Tartan East Golf Club with Tartan Golf and Management Co. LLC as the operator.

A private country club owned by its members, Winding Hollow closed earlier in 2008 when financial problems sent it into receivership. The club was purchased in May by the New Albany Co. and Georgetown Co., which then turned to Tartan Golf and Management to reopen and manage the course and clubhouse. It's being operated as a public course, with greens fees of $60 on weekdays and $75 weekends.

The course is just down the road from Dye's famed The Golf Club. Tartan also owns and operates the private Tartan Fields Golf Club in Dublin as well as the public Golf Club of Dublin and the new Corazon Club and Spa, also in Dublin. Tartan manages five other golf clubs in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Indiana.

Tartan Golf president Steve Renaker thinks the challenging course design, fashioned by Arthur Hills, will offer a fresh test for golfers who couldn't get on the course when it was private.
Tartan East still has a secluded, private club feel - maybe it's because the heavily-wooded layout that has no parallel holes, or homes anywhere near the property to distract from a round. Tartan East really is a back-to-nature journey with deer and other wild creatures often making visits. There really is no hint of civilization when you're playing Tartan East, quite remarkable considering its proximity to the population center of central Ohio.

In true Hills style, he makes a primarily flat piece of land feel like there are significant elevation changes by using mounding to create rolling fairways throughout the 200-acre property. Something else that's pure Hills is the demand, not so much for distance, as for shot-making. From the back tees, the par-4s range from 365 yards to 445. You're likely to use four different clubs on the par-3s no matter which of the five tees you choose, and the par-5s all play more than 500 yards from the tips, with most of ending at smaller-than-average greens.

The design of the course takes advantage of the variety of winds that sweep through the area, combining with the rolling terrain to give you different shot options every time you play.

After a pair of stout par-4s at the start, Tartan East really throws you a curve, with a pair of par-3s sandwiched around the longest par-5 on the course. The first par-3 (the 170-yard third) is extremely wooded. The other (190-yard fifth) requires a carry over water to a sloping green. In fact, the stretch of the fourth, fifth and sixth holes is a bear (one animal you won't see on the grounds), nearly two-thirds of a mile of challenging golf. And the contrast between the brutish sixth and the relatively short, but extremely picturesque par-4 No. 7 will not go unnoticed.

The short par-4 ninth (365 yards) tempts you to use driver off the tee, but don't do it - anything less than perfect will send you into the trees and in a spot for a big score.

Three of the four hardest holes on the back nine come right after the turn, but it's the last three holes that just might make or break a round. The meaty par-4 16th is followed by the longest par-3 at Tartan East, the nearly 200-yard 17th, much of it over marshland. The fairly short par-5 18th is a great risk-reward finisher that wraps around a pond that runs the length of the hole on the right-hand side, all of it in front of the fairly large audience viewing the conclusion of your round from a spacious clubhouse that features floor-to-ceiling windows above the home hole.

Shotmaking is at a premium at Tartan East, as the myriad trees that hug the course's fairways almost seem to reach out and grab any ball headed their way. "The variety of winds that sweep over the terrain demand different shot selections every time you play," said Brian Bonfini, Tartan East's general manager. Tartan East has also been "opened up" by trimming back many of the higher trees to let more sunlight through the wooded canopies, and then by removing much of the ground cover to allow for playing out of the woods, Carolina-style.
All in all, Tartan East - which plays at 6,870 yards and a par of 72 with a rating of 73.7 and slope of 138 - provides an enjoyable round of golf. For more information or a tee time, visit http://www.tartaneast.com/home/index.php.