The best golf courses you can play in New Jersey

From Golf Digest Architecture Editor Emeritus Ron Whitten: Until I visited the area, I always wondered why the northwestern corner of New Jersey had so few golf courses. When I finally got there, it became obvious. It’s mountainous, better for rock-climbing or skiing than golf. It’s hard to grow grass on solid granite.

That corner of Jersey is not totally devoid of golf, but most of it is clustered atop a bluff overlooking the Walkill River valley. There's Great Gorge, 27 holes by George Fazio that had been a Playboy Hotel resort when it first opened in 1970. Twenty years later came Crystal Springs, chiseled from quarries by Robert von Hagge. That course was purchased soon after it opened by ski resort moguls John and Jack Kurlander. They then tried their hands at designing a companion golf course, Black Bear. It was okay but received lukewarm reviews from critics, so when the Kurlanders decided in 1997 to add still another 18 to their collection, a course they would name Ballyowen, they hired a real golf architect, Roger Rulewich, who'd been the chief associate for Robert Trent Jones for a quarter century. Rulewich had handled every major Jones project from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s, including the Robert Trent Jones Golf Club in Virginia (site of several Presidents Cups) and the extensive Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail in Alabama. Ballyowen was the first solo design Rulewich tackled after the Trent Jones corporation folded up around him in 1996.

You can read Whitten's complete review here.