Golf Country - South Easton, MA
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
Score: 65/100
Would we play this course again? No.
Should you play this course? No.
The Takeaway: With mini golf, a large driving range, batting cages, and ice cream, Golf Country Easton offers something for almost everyone. However the mini golf course it offers is lackluster and the course suffers from too large of a footprint with not enough care and attention to detail to go around. While there are a couple moderately bright spots, this course is rough around the edges and could do with a makeover including a water-feature deep clean and some revitalized landscaping. There are a couple fun holes on the course that reward finesse play and critical thinking, but a fair amount are just hit it and hope for the best. There is better mini golf to be found about 20 minutes down the road at Prisco’s Pine Grove.
Golf Country in South Easton
TECHNICAL REVIEW
Golf Country Easton (there is also a Golf Country located north of Boston in Middleton) is an 18-hole outdoor mini golf course located in South Easton, MA. It’s part of a complex that includes the mini golf course, a driving range, batting cages, and an ice cream place. The course is difficult to miss and located in a large open area right off Route 138 in Easton.
The entrance to Golf Country
This course has plenty of roadside allure, with a large ship near the front of the course and an enormous central waterfall feature. Behind the course you can see the netting of the batting cages, and further back lies the driving range area. Several large deciduous trees provide shade over the back portions of the course, while the front stretch along the road is mostly shade-free and exposed to the full afternoon sun. Even as grown (debatable) adults we’re unable to resist the pull of a large waterfall and ship, and so it was that we bounded eagerly forth (“sprinted”) from our parked vehicle to the first tee.
The first few holes of mini golf at a new course often present an overload of stimuli. Fresh out of the car, there are un-warmed up putting skills to contend with, unfamiliar and unique course conditions, a potpourri of new smells and soundscapes, and occasionally heavy people-traffic from other parties teeing off. Through all of this we try to gradually feel out our initial course reactions and usually find ourselves making early course assessments which may or may not hold true through all 18 holes.
As we barrelled through the first several holes at Golf Country we remained open to whatever the course had in store for us. The first few holes presented some basic obstacles, shown in the photos above. Each of us even netted an early hole in one on this initial stretch to boost our confidence. Early on too, we saw the gist of the course construction style emerge: natural mortared-rock perimeters, medium to long hole length, and decent turf-style greens with no major tears.
The fourth hole takes you onto the deck of a concrete-constructed ship, and has you putting down the length towards the bow. It’s a unique hole on the course, but it seems to fall short of its potential. If you’re going to go through hard work of building a ship, why not add in a mast obstacle in the middle or a large wooden steering wheel and really embellish and liven up the sort-of nautical theme? There is a bench for resting on this hole as well, or for taking seated photos, as shown below.
The 5th hole sneakily funnels your ball off to the left and out of bounds through a hole in the rock perimeter if you’re not paying attention as happened to one of us. The 6th hole was a nice one and featured a water jump, though there was not much more strategy than making sure you cleared it. Holes 7 and 8 feature some more water-based play; on 7 you go up a steep bank and under a sort of aqeueduct, and 8 is a UTWTYA (“use the water to your advantage”, as mentioned in this Paradise Family Golf review) hole, which a sign on the hole encourages you to do. See the video below in which I try to go for the narrow rock opening but get bounced off to the water anyway (and almost kicked out of bounds).
The 9th hole is a “Cool S” (or whatever you want to call it…the “S” that everyone drew on their notebooks in school) kind of figure-8 shaped hole and rewards you nicely with a hole in one if you finesse-bank it and take the high road overpass route. This hole design has appeared on a few courses we’ve seen so far including the 8th hole at Trombetta’s Farm in Marlborough.
Through the front nine holes it’s clear that this course is decent, but nothing that goes above and beyond or really wows us. There are a couple fun holes, and the medium-long hole length is nice, but the course overall feels rough around the edges (literally, the “natural” rock borders are not great and don’t allow for skilled bank shots) and a little unkempt. There’s a lack of nice landscaping, and the water feature has a lot of algae-like growth/grime in it (photo below). And while at least the greens are in good shape, when you’re playing 80-plus Massachusetts courses on a quest for the best mini golf in the state like we are, courses like this that overlook details are bound to end up in the middle of the pack.
The back nine makes its way up towards the main waterfall feature, under the waterfall with the requisite underpass cave-hole, then winds its way down and around the back of waterfall hill before closing out with a downhill plinko-esque 18th hole. These 9 holes offer a mix of skill-based and just-whack-it type play, including large multi-tiered 14th hole. The large 16th hole is ambitious but falls flat, with a successful shot into the upper hole not really rewarding you and instead haphazardly spitting you out onto the rough lower landing area (you’re almost better off missing the upper hole and just taking the right angle downhill path…you’ll understand if you play it).
The highlights of the back nine are perhaps the 13th, which requires some thought and is a good example of one of those holes you want to play again after your first attempt to figure out the puzzle of how best to play it. The 17th too deserves a mention for a straightforward but finesse-requiring uphill hole. It generally seems that the more skill-based holes there are like this, the more we enjoy the mini golf.
Ultimately, there is just not that much to get fired up about at this course. As with a number of courses we’ve played, we expect this would absolutely check the box for providing a fun weekend family outing with kids. And if we lived in the Easton area and had kids, we’d probably stop in here once or twice a summer. That said, we don’t have kids, and we’re not in need of weekend family outings. We’re chasing those truly exceptional courses in the state. The ones that for some reason or another delight us, inspire us, surprise us, confound us, amusingly confuse us, or in some other way blow our tiny undersized minds. And Golf Country in Easton just doesn’t make the cut.
APPENDIX
We’re about 30 courses in to our quest to play and review every mini golf course in Massachusetts, and by our current estimates there are about 55 courses in the state remaining. We’re scoring all of these course according a scoring rubric (we haven’t shared the “back-end” of what this rubric looks like yet, but we may…) and already it seems that we’re seeing some sort of bell curve form. We’re not plotting things on Excel charts yet, but still we can see the beginnings of this bell curve in our reviews and feel it in our playing. You’ve got some small-ish number of courses that are really quite lackluster, a large number that are in the middle “playable enough but not exceptional” category, and then a limited number of terrific courses that get us fired up and all giddy to go back to them and play them again.
Golf Country Easton lands in the thick middle part of this bell curve in our opinion. And it’s worth reminding ourselves, and anyone who may actually be reading this, that there’s nothing wrong with being in the middle of the bell curve (and you may even disagree…Golf Country Easton in your opinion could be the best course in the state). Most of us are in the middle of the bell curve in some or most characteristics in life. Indeed it is that the middle of the bell curve courses are the backbone, work-horse mini golf courses of the state, keeping youths and adults alike entertained during many a summer hour. And that’s the end of this impromptu sermon. Happy mini golfing out there, folks.