12 greens are double greens, a common practice during the era in which the course was built. Huge old oak trees, some with trunks so big that two men cannot wrap their arms around them, protect dinky greens. Steep, unforgiving ravines run along and up to most fairways. The fairways undulate and offer thick grass that limits roll and makes the course play a couple of hundred yards longer than the scorecard's tepid 6,671 yards. What's more, the age and richness of the greens throws off a golfer's perspective: the grass feels spongy but the roll is quick as a marble in a soup bowl.Īnd the challenges of Sleepy Hollow don't end there. In the summer under drought conditions and the baked-sun summer heat of Northeast Ohio, these greens are beyond challenging. The weekend golfer often finds himself befuddled about the break because he will see it only after he strikes his putt and the ball begins a horrible roll in that disturbing curlicue - maybe ending in the hole but probably not. The greens at Sleepy Hollow, with their deceptive grading that appears flat but causes some sweeping, slow-moving rolls, have caused many a golfer to question his putting prowess. The country club that opened in 1925, the roaring 20s, would become a home for the workingman golfer every day from that night onward.īesides its place in local legal and tee-time lore, there are at least a couple of other reasons why Sleepy Hollow is a destination worth a couple-hour car drive or a stolen round while visiting Cleveland on a business trip. The discriminating country club folded and this challenging 18-hole array became a public Sleepy Hollow.
Nobody knows if they busted up a social gathering when they arrived, but the smart money says that the local gentry were embroiled in a traditional country club New Year's Eve party. Park rangers actually came on New Years Eve in 1963 to claim it for the public. There was a nice touch, too, to the way the course switched ownership.
Now everybody can enjoy these swoops and slides through gentle valleys and ridges with views of northern Ohio that nearly stretch to the blue umbrella skies of Lake Erie and the distant towers of Cleveland on clear days.įorget about memberships, as this is now a bastion of quality, daily fee golf. Tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees later, Metzenbaum won his case.
The country club had been built on public land. He filed a lawsuit against the country club in the name of his wife, and then set out to get even. Metzenbaum, who would later become a multi-millionaire and hero of rank-and-file workmen and their union causes, didn't turn the other cheek and get his tee-times elsewhere. Howard Metzenbaum was looking to play a few rounds of golf a couple of times a month, he was denied membership here. If Sleepy Hollow seems to be one of those rare public courses in Ohio that truly has country club conditions, it's because it once was just that.Īnd that thank you note should go to a man who is in many ways the father of public golf in Cleveland.
#SLEEPY RIDGE GOLF COURSE FULL#
Flash-forward a few more thousand years and you have a great golf course full of players sneaking one-iron shots onto 220-yard par threes and putting for birdies instead of shooting them. When the glaciers finally retreated some 14,000 years ago, the resulting glens, glades and dales below were left behind. BRECKSVILLE, OHIO - Sleepy Hollow Golf Course in the Cleveland suburb of Brecksville needs to send a couple of belated thank-you notes.Īnd as the placard points out just off the first tee, none of it would be there were it not for the glaciers from about 20,000 years ago that covered this ground more than a mile deep.
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