Vineyard National Golf Course At Renault Winery

I hear the commercials on the radio all the time about this beautiful golf course of Renault with spectacular scenery and a challenging layout so I finally had the opportunity to check it out for myself. Unfortunately I wasn't utterly impressed. Granted the scenery as far as its location is really nice, snug and hidden alongside a vineyard, but the actual course itself was very plain with the exception of a few holes. Every hole has enormous fairways with little obstacles so it wasn't really challenging. The length of the course and the few sandtraps were the only things that truly had to be managed. With all the publicity and advertising I hear about this course I expected an immaculate layout, but that too wasn't anything great. The fairways were nice, but the rough got little attention and was just high grass. Fortunately I kept it straight most of the day, but finding your ball just off the fairway proved difficult. Maybe this was the most challenging part of the course. The 7th and 8th holes are definately their signature holes and are unique and eye appealing. The 7th you actually walk into the vineyard, tee off on an elevated tee and hit over a few rows of grapes. The 8th a bunker splits the fairway down the middle. Two nice holes. The greens were being aerated so putting was difficult, but on normal conditions I'd suspect the greens would be nice and play to a rather fast speed. The price of $40 to walk weekday twilight is a bit much for a rather average course. I can only guess that the attention and amount of money put into advertising is a result of the owners being substantially wealthy due to the amount of revenue generated from the vineyard, and expensive restaurant/resort/hotel that neighbors the golf course. So they can afford the radio commercials, but the course itself, which had little players when I was there, doesn't live up to the hype. They do have a cool logo ball for the logo ball lover like myself, a huge plus. All in all though it's an overpriced tourist trap. Overall rating C+.

We plsyed it today. They charged $60 for greens that were terrible. They punched them 4 weeks ago which seemed like 4 days ago. The whole course was in sad shape. Shot 80

I live locally, and have watched this course mature over time. I'm not sure if they even used sod initially or just seeded the sandy soil, because for the first bunch of years this course was thin, bare, barren and any other adjective that implies the opposite of lush. I actually stayed away for awhile due to the desert-like conditions. But, for the last couple of years, the grass must have finally sunk its roots deep into the Pine Barrens and tapped the aquafer, because Renault has matured into a fabulous course. The fariways and greens are close and plush and are reminiscent of top-tier venues. Plus, the layout is challenging and imaginitive for the most part, with a pleasing mix of sloping, doglegging, eleveation change, bunkering, and green tiering. #7, for instance, is a short par 4 with a long nasty bunker splitting the fairway in two, and while in reality it is not a hard hole, it is visually intimidating and entertaining. My only complaint is that some holes have long distances from green to the next tee which makes walking tough. In my mind, Renault has become one of the best courses in S Jersey, and because it costs less than most of its competitors, it is definitely the best value in S Jersey.