Cafe Sarina Garden Golf - Georgetown, MA
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Score: 91/100
Would we play this course again? Yes.
Should you play this course? Yes.
The Takeaway: An exquisite mini golf course that is magnificently executed in both design and construction. Don’t be deceived by the tranquil garden setting: bring your A-game because this can be a challenging and unforgiving course. Some holes are enigmatic, offering themselves up to you like a riddle, a brainteaser puzzle that needs to be unlocked. Others make clear there is no game, only a hard and fast test of nerves where a few inches may make the difference between par and a 5-put. The prospect of playing a couple rounds here on a crisp autumn afternoon followed by a beer in their lovely garden cafe has us getting emotional. It’s only marginal hyperbole to suggest that if there is a heaven some version of this course must surely exist there.
Cafe Sarina Garden Golf in Georgetown
TECHNICAL REVIEW
Cafe Sarina Garden Golf is an 18-hole outdoor mini golf course located in Georgetown. It’s part of a small complex that includes the mini golf course, a cafe, and an ice cream place (called Kallie’s Kones). All of these are situated on the larger grounds of an adjacent greenhouse and florist business called Nunan’s. We’re not sure how the arrangement works exactly, but suffice to say that clearly people are looking after the landscaping on the mini golf course because it is exceedingly well maintained.
You pay for mini golf at the ice cream shack window (look for the large plastic golf ball-shaped golf ball holder) and receive your card. They do something cool here where the card features a blank list for you to mark down plants that you see along the course so that you can go investigate and potentially buy them at the greenhouse later. This is a great business idea, and we took this as a harbinger of good things to come considering the same careful attention to detail must surely translate to the golf course design as well.
Labeled plants on the course
The course is situated adjacent to a large parking lot area. While it’s terrifically well-landscaped, there is not much int he way of shade on most of the course. Give it a few more years and it seems likely trees will mature enough to provide more shade. This is hardly a complaint, instead more of a recommendation to plan ahead and perhaps bring a hat should you be playing on a sunny day.
The first couple holes ease you into things with moderately challenging layouts, definitely nothing that is overly easy. These holes are on the longer side and give you ample opportunity to start of with a 3 or 4-putt if things go sideways. Rock placement on these holes is thoughtfully done so as to provide a challenge and a clear payoff should you manage to make a well executed putt.
It’s within these first few holes that you realize playing this course is as much as auditory experience as it is visual. The white noise of water flowing from the water features, and abundant chirping of birds which have no doubt found terrific homes among the wide variety of flora on the course provide a terrific soundtrack that could very well be recorded and then piped into any PGA tour tournament television broadcast.
Back to the course, the third hole offered a puzzle. Rock placement suggested it might behoove you to actually putt your ball into the river and get carried downstream towards the hole…or was this a red herring designed to mercilessly swallow up golf balls and bruise egos? One of us had the wherewithal to go for it (see video below) while another went for the more difficult but “safer” land-base option. The results speak for themselves, and the idea of water being an aid on the course is a paradigm shift, akin to telling someone that touching hot stoves is actually good for your hands (we have since seen this river-as-a-benefit twist employed at a few other courses, including Paradise Golf which we visited later in the day, so clearly this is not totally novel but still it’s a fun little feature and employed better here than at some places we have seen)
A couple comments about the fundamentals: this course basically nails them. Greens are in great condition and free of debris, the hole numbers are clearly marked in concrete near the tee area, the cups are uniform and do not side proud of the greens, the borders around holes are neat and well maintained allowing for predictable bank shots, and there are no annoying rubber putting mats (they do provide small turf mats to start from that designate a starting area, but these are quite palatable).
Continuing, the 7th hole offered up a fun challenge. This is a “feel” test wherein your ability to gauge speed is 90% of the battle, requiring you to crest a hump carrying only a tiny amount of speed, just enough to carry you over the hump around the hole. This one bested us both, as seen below, and given there was no one else around we had to play it a couple times to see if we could chalk up a hole in one.
This brings us to one of our few criticisms of this course. Generally course conditions here are great, but this hole sadly had some rips and tears around the green as shown in the video. It’s unfortunate but we’d guess it’s not long before this gets repaired based on how much management seems to look after the place.
Another finesse hole quickly follows on Hole 8 where tricky mid-slope hole placement sent one member of our party packing with a four-putt which felt like a success and could have been worse. Overall, turning in a good performance on this course relies on navigating various undulations and subtle elevation changes. Some holes too require bankshots off carefully shaped rocks, or accuracy tests with passing through narrow rock tunnels. A common theme too is the use of secondary, lower-elevation green areas, lurking in wait to gobble up errant putts and make you work your way back uphill towards the hole should you have an errant first shot.
Others holes are puzzles. The 14th hole for example: On a downhill hole like this, do you go right for the cup and hope not to carry too much speed and roll all the way to the large lower green should you miss? Or is there some secret key that you’re missing? We won’t give anything away but you can see how one of us plays (intentionally or unintentionally, you decide) it below:
The great mini golf continues down the home stretch, with a walk across a small footbridge on the 15th, and a long 16th that takes you up two tiers to a mid-slope hole placement that one of us managed a hole-in-one on (there were two total for the day in our party: one on this hole, and one on the 11th). The 17th has you navigating around a rock, or going for a bank off that rock which has an infinitesimally small potential bank angle which may in fact not even be possible, we couldn’t decide.
After a tremendous 17 holes we sadly arrived at a ski-ball-style ball return hole on the 18th which left us wanting a proper hole in it’s place. Were it not for this, we would bump up our rating of this course even a few more points. But still, this last hole detracted only a very tiny amount from what amounted to a stellar round of mini golf.
We followed up the round with some ice cream in the cafe (we sat inside, though there is an outdoor area), which was clean, well appointed, and had a friendly staff. Needless to say, discussion during ice cream eating focused primarily on how we couldn’t wait to play this place again.
APPENDIX
When you don’t read reviews before you play a course you’re going in with no preconceived notions or expectations. One of the benefits of sailing the stormy waters of a preliminary-research-free mini golf existence is that you open yourself up to terrific surprises. We did not know what to expect when we showed up here and to say we were pleasantly surprised is an understatement. Of course, reviews do have their place, and if you’re trying to make good use of your time, energy, and money (arguably, we are not), reading reviews ahead of time (such as the reviews on this website) can be time well spent.
This course sets a high bar. Writing this with approximately 25 Massachusetts courses under our belts and some 60 courses remaining, it’s hard to see how Cafe Sarina Garden Golf won’t land among the best courses, very likely in the top 10 in the state. Admittedly we have a good amount of mini golf to go, but this course is tough to improve upon. It nails the modern, garden-style, landscaped style of play and exceeds in almost all of those critical details that can often be overlooked: Obstacle placement is exacting, pin locations perfected, and undulation usage highly effective.
This is a challenging course that will keep you on your toes and we would (and will) happily return. We look forward to coming back sometime in the fall, playing a few rounds, drinking a beer on a patio area, and following it all up with an ice cream or three.