Royal Oak Golf Course

Pros: Large and excellent greens… a challenging track… a value if you go the Groupon route.
Cons: Surly staff and rangers (old farts with nothing better to do, I guess)… pricey without a Groupon or Group Golfer cert.
A nice course for high handicappers yet a good challenge for those of us who have been playing awhile. The greens are huge and in excellent shape since the spring of 2015 has been so wet. Birdied #6 — a 516-​yard dogleg left par 5 with four excellent shots including a 250-​yard drive right down the middle. The «beer Nazi» ranger was quite annoying however and the guy in the clubhouse looks like he hasn’t smiled since the 50’s. Even the young girl in the snack bar looked disinterested and bored — but maybe her phone died.

A nice, well-​maintained course for the money. I had a lot of fun playing last week with friends.

Some of the most rude and ornery people work here. Especially the guy behind the counter… And don’t ever buy a gift certificate unless you plan on using it that season. Apparently they don’t play by state laws that mandate gift certificates can’t expire within five years of issue. There are better maintained golf courses in the area with much friendlier staffs.

I am an avid golfer and just played Royal Oak Golf Club on 13 mile and the second RO course, Normandy Oaks. Wow what an improvement from a couple of years ago! These courses have been in poor condition for a long time but are now on the way back big time. Found out they have a new greens keeper that came from a private country club after 30 years there. He started last year. The greens, tees and fairways at both courses are in very good condition. All new sand in the bunkers — no more dirt bunkers. What a difference one year makes (and a new greens keeper!). I will definitely be playing these two course more often. If you played these courses when they were basic ‘Cow Pastures” a few years ago you won’t believe the difference!
I also saw an active and well attended junior program going on at Normandy this past Tuesday. Had to be 40+ kids receiving instructions and playing a mini version of the course (junior tee boxes were in place making the holes much shorter) Nice to see…

I only play here so I can golf with my dad. The course is essentially a grass field now, with weeds, dead areas, and unmanicured fairways.
I don’t know what’s happened to this joint the last 10 years, but it’s in horrible condition. Time for Royal Oak to find a new manager for this place before they decide to dump it and put up condos.
–Update 5÷18÷2013
I didn’t think it could get worse, but it has. Today was the last straw. Weeds and dandelions in the rough plus grass grown to 4″ made it IMPOSSIBLE to find a ball in the rough. That turned into a 9 of almost 3 hours. This is on a 3000 yard 9-​hole course with 2 small ponds and is dead flat.
I’m all for bulldozing this joint down.
–Summer 2014 Update
I’ve changed my review. They hired a new green’s keeper at the end of 2013, and I tried the course again. He really has made a nice turnaround to the condition of the course and has set it up to be much more playable for a muni.
1) No more weeds run rampant! There are still a few dead spots in the fairways, but this will probably take more than half a season to recover
2) No more ridiculous rough lengths! You can actually find your ball when it’s a foot into the rough.
3) Fairways are actually cut! For whatever reason, on #2 they would just «end» the fairway cutting around the 120 yard mark, up to about 40 yards short of the green. Insane. The new guys are now cutting this down and making it fairway, as they should.
I didn’t think you could turn around a course in this amount of time, but nice job.

Horrible. Not a bad municipal layout. Short but some trees and dog legs. But the condition last week was beyond awful. The greens were passable but the tees and fairways were basically dead and burnt. I stopped in for a lark to play rather than practice. The condition was so bad that finding a patch of green grass was impossible. I’m sure it is budget the Birmingham courses are fine and green. Worth five or ten bucks to be out but not more. Too bad too

Pretty good course, didn’t find it to be that hard, and shot a reasonable score. The staff here was pretty friendly, and they were open later than the nearby Normandy Oaks course. The only negative I had was the price, which was like 28 dollars for 9 holes with a cart.