White Oaks Golf Course Review

Fourteen at White Oak is a 411 yard par 4.

White Oaks Golf Course
Hillsdale, Michigan
Grade: C-
Teacher’s Comments: Acceptable — and occasionally interesting golf — at a very good price.

White Oaks is a pasture and parklands course that bills itself as the only eighteen-hole course in Hillsdale County. I’m sure that’s true, but it seems odd, given how many courses are packed into the state of Michigan.

Most of White Oaks is wide open and flat pasture. The exceptions are a few holes at the front of the course where it is routed over hilly areas dipping down to a creek and a couple of retaining ponds. Light woods also mark the outer edges of the course separating it from surrounding farmlands.

The holes along the creek/ drainage are the most interesting. The first, second, eighth, ninth, tenth and eleventh play along the front creek with some complicating elevation changes. The remaining holes are very much flat. Five and six have some marshy areas to avoid.

A view from behind the green on White Oaks’ 320-yard par 4 ninth. The tee box is on the hill center left.

Aside from the aforementioned, the rest of the holes are fairly ordinary wide open and flat.

Still, White Oaks does not pretend to be something it is not. I paid $17.50 to walk eighteen holes. For that price, the course offers acceptable golf. It is for that reason that I gave it a C-.

My favorite hole was the 446-yard par 4 fourth (that’s a lot of fours). It’s a bit of a dogleg left that starts wide open and narrows through trees as it approaches the green.

A small drainage ditch crosses the fairway a third of the way out to make it a little more interesting.

A view of the fourth green at White Oaks

White Oaks is a par 71 that tops out at 6, 162 yards. It is neither long nor difficult.

Tee	Yardage	Slope	Rating
Blue	6, 162	121	70.7
White	5, 836	115	68.2
Red	4, 988	105	64.9

Conditions on the day I played were a mixed bag. There was vegetation on most of the fairways, but much of the course had an untended feel. In some places, the fairways were at what I consider rough height. Greens were in good shape. For the most part, I didn’t encounter any conditions that got in the way of play.

The White Oaks golf course review was first published January 30, 2024 from notes and photos taken on a round played in the summer of 2023. For all of GolfBlogger’s Michigan Golf Course Reviews (as well as golf course reviews from other states), follow the link.

A photo tour of White Oaks follows: