PhilipAbram

My wife and I played 180 rounds in 2018, from coast to coast, and Hillsborough remains one of our favorite "go to" courses.

The staff, Drew and Bobby, are fun, knowledgeable, and very focused on the satisfaction of the golfers.

The pace of play is always excellent, last week we finished a round, while playing multiple balls, in 2:45. Like many local courses, the weather has taken a small toll on Hillsborough, but it is still far better condition than most of the local courses we play.

The layout is challenging, with several side sloping fairways ,elevation changes, doglegs,, and many holes requiring course knowledge to plan the right shot. Every hole is unique and requires thoughtful play to get even a par.

Many of the greens are daunting, and if the greenskeeper had a bad night, it is very possible to hit a four foot putt off of the green, then down a hill, for a 30 yrd return chip shot.

Hillsborough is a course that needs to be played many times before a golfer really understands it. While it is a short course, the layout favors accuracy and course management overr distance in order to score even reasonably well.

I highly recommend Hillsborough to golfers of all levels. It is fun, the staff is great, and it will make you want to come back and try it again, and again. It is an excellent value and should be supported by all.

This is a very challenging course with many unique holes that require careful club selection and precise targeting on the extremely sloped fairways. Proper positioning on the greens was also critical because a three putt was always the penalty for poor shot placement. To take your mind of your horrific score, there are spectacular scenic views from many holes.

With the major elevation changes, this is not a course for walkers, and even driving the carts on the sloped fairways was quite a challenge. Many speed bumps on the cart paths help keep the carts at a safe speed on the steep inclines.

This is a great course, but not one for beginners or the faint of heart. Expect to be completely exhausted, and exhilarated, by the end of the round.

My wife and I were paired up with another mixed couple, which was good, but the overall pace of play was quite bad. My wife and I finished in over 5 hrs, and in the dark, and the other couple quit before finishing 18 holes because the play of the groups in front of us was so incredibly slow and we were waiting to hit on almost every shot.

My wife and I have played 92 different courses in the past three years, and Raven's Claw is in the top ten on our list. We were lucky that on a spectacular Sunday afternoon, we still finished our round in under 4 hours. We drove 90 minutes to get to the course, and we will definitely do it again.

The course was in excellent condition and each hole presented very different shot choices and challenges. It is a course where "good thought" is as important as :good shot".

This challenging course, especially the greens, was in great shape and pace of play was 3:15 which made for an extremely enjoyable day.

There are many fun (i.e. quirky) holes that require both thought and precision, which makes for a much more challenging round. Hitting to the proper location in the fairway or on the green is critical to shooting a reasonable score.

I do recommend that people try this course, as the holes are quite scenic, challenging, and unique.

My wife and I are avid golfers (130 rounds each on 45 different courses in 2013), and we stopped playing at Cranbury a few years ago because of the very poor pace of play.

This year, we tried Cranbury again, twice to be certain, and the pace of play remains at an unacceptable 5+ hrs. We will not head back to Cranbury soon.

On 6/21/14 when we played, we found many greens littered with smoldering cigarette butts, and the greens and fairways littered with several BYOB beer cans (i.e. those not sold in the bar). I was amazed at the complete lack of respect of the players who apparently felt that littering was acceptable for them.

With the slow pace of play, there is constant hole jumping by the groups, making the pace of play even slower for players who are trying to play the holes in the correct order.

The two times we played this year were actually worse than our prior experiences, so we will not go back to Cranbury for a few more years.

I believe that the course is severely overbooked, causing the slow pace of play and resulting hole jumping, and the Cranbury players do not seem to understand the basic ediquette of golf, or now even cleaning up after themselves.