Manakiki Golf Course-Cleveland Metroparks

One of my friends recently got married here and I was very impressed with the venue. They had an outdoor wedding and the setting was beautiful. They were married under a gazebo overlooking the woods which added to the entire atmosphere of the event.

Public golf course in Willoughby Hills. Donald Ross designed, beautiful course. About 20 – 25 mins drive from downtown CLE. Part of the metro parks courses around the greater Cleveland area.

Great Donald Ross design… play the back tees for full effect… needs work on the edges and some new carts w/​GPS

Played Manakiki over the weekend. I won’t pretend to be that knowledgeable when it comes to golf courses, but it certainly seemed like a very challenging course. There are a lot of elevation changes and it seemed to me that on many, if not most, of my shots, I had to deal with not being able to hit the ball on a completely flat surface (i.e., feet above/​below the ball or left foot higher/​lower than the right). The course itself is beautiful – the view from nearly every tee is a sight in itself. I thought there was a restrained and judicious use of water hazards and sand traps.
Two negatives: The greens must have just been recently aerated – it was a little disconcerting lining up long putts. Second, on one hole, there was clearly construction going on in a «sand» bunker to the left of the hole. It ended up being a brutally deep mud hole complete with a backhoe shovel sitting in the middle of it. Needless to say, my ball strained mightily to get a closer look, but fortunately my approach shot… sailed right over the green.