Farmingbury Hills Golf Club

Sprawling down a huge hill away from its starting point--the East Street Eatery--this scenic course affords you some of the best distant views of any Connecticut golf course. Farmingbury Hills’ first four holes wend their way downward from the opening tee, each on one of them plunging, it seems, a bit more to each fairway and green. The tee shot on the spectacular fourth treats you to a panoramic vista rivalled by few I’ve encountered anywhere, on any layout. Then you’ll find two relatively secluded holes at five and six, although a view back from tee six, where you can peer over the fifth fairway, again overlooks a faraway hill. Holes seven through nine move back to the ‘upland’ section of the routing, where a pleasantly challenging finish awaits. Green eighteen sits below the East Street Eatery, where you may feel (as you wedge in your third shot and putt the green) the somewhat judgemental gaze of diners--though I doubt the majority of them will be golfers.

I’ve reviewed FH several times now over the past three years, so it’s unnecessary to go into details once again. But suffice it to say, this is a course worth playing. What’s most important, perhaps, over the last year is the continued improvement of the green complexes and their surrounds, which I consider ‘strong’ for a public track with heavy play. I’m hoping that the fairways will soon be given the same consideration to round out the improvements. The tees are acceptable but don’t affect the quality of play all that much.

But I feel like Farmingbury Hills will continue to be a course I play three or four times a year, when I’m out this way some 45 minutes from home, considering that it may be paired up, on a fine summer day perhaps, with another solid 9-holer like Pomperaug or Sleeping Giant or Hop Brook, none of which is all that far away.

Playing Experience:
I was fortunate this afternoon to join a threesome of friends by the names of Derrick (Rick), Wayne and Chris, all of whom are members here, great guys, and avid golfers. We enjoyed a terrific nine and unabated conversation throughout (see them in the pics). This was the kind of pleasantly unexpected event that put an exclamation point on my weekend.

Very nice course overall. Only semi downfall is the tee times are way to close together. We had a tee time of just past 3pm and we didn’t start for nearly 40 minutes after that. The tee times are nearly every 4-5 minutes which is just too close together.