The Marshes Golf Club — Attraction in Ottawa

The course is nice and challenging, and well maintained. It’s a fun course to play, but there is a lack of organization that leaves a lot to be desired. The pace of play can be infuriating at times, with some of my rounds this summer taking 5 or 5.5 hours. After seeing the starting marshal, you won’t see any marshals on the course for the duration of your round. Slow groups have zero pressure to pick up their pace of play - it’s not uncommon to see 3 groups waiting at the same tee. This creates issues elsewhere.

This is my first year being a member at the course and, over the duration of the summer, there is an increasing frequency of carts not being available for my group when we show up for our tee time. Of course, they are waiting for earlier groups to finish so they can clean their carts and pass them along to us, but groups aren’t finishing their rounds at a normal pace because no marshals on the course, and so on.

Yesterday (September 6, 2020), my group and I waited 20 minutes for carts to come off 18 so we could go hit some range balls prior to our round. It was unfortunate, but we were used to this type of thing happening, so no big deal. As we continued to wait, more and more groups came to wait for carts, and then we found out the reason for the wait. FOUR groups of 4 came off of the 18th tee at the same time. It was very clearly a large group of friends playing some type of match/tournament amongst themselves. But they were all able to sit and wait at the 18th tee with 8 carts until all four groups finished the round. Then they brought their carts back. My frustration was compounded when we finally got our carts and scrambled to get to the starter in time. I explained the situation to him and asked if we could just run to the range and hit 5 range balls. The starter just chuckled and said they had no range balls! What!?

This lack of organization is the reason I may not be back as a member for next season. It is a nice course, but it seems like once players tee off at #1, nobody cares what happens after that. As a member, it makes it near impossible to know how long a round will take us one day to the next. It could take us 4 hours, or could take us 5.5. Just a lack of organization to manage the pace of play for each group.

It’s 2 stars for my overall experience as a member here...

Went there yesterday...Let me preface this with, it costs 140$ to play a round here with a cart(fine with that). it was a rainy day, "cart path only" which is fair due to the conditions(does make the round take longer as you cant drive to each ball). We were playing our round when we got asked to speed up "No problem"....So we started playing a scramble best ball in 2 pairs of 2's. We got around to the back 9 when one of the marshals came up to us for the second time asking if we could skip a hole(had nobody behind us for the last hour+)....We asked why and he stated that there were groups waiting on us. Again, hadn't seen anyone waiting on us to tee off for the last few holes. We told him we hadn't seen anyone waiting, to which he replied "that's not what our satellite says" into which he kept trying to pressure us to skip a hole(having paid 140$, changed the way we played & cart path only, and not having anyone waiting on us). Eventually he decided to "go check for himself" and never came back... 3 holes later, we could see the hole he asked us to skip on, AND THERE WAS STILL NOBODY TEEING OFF!!!!! If you want to constantly be pressured for no reason at all and pay premium for it, this is the place. If you want to enjoy the game of golf, PLEASE GO ELSEWHERE. I would have completely understood if groups were waiting on us, or on our tail. However it being cart path only and things taking longer as it is plus wet conditions with nobody behind us for at the very least 3 holes, there is ZERO reason to pressure a group to speed up or SKIP A HOLE, after...

My husband and I booked a stay & play package through Brookstreet. My husband is an experienced golfer but it was my first time playing a round, so I was planning to play the easier holes and watch my husband play the more challenging ones. Although the Marshes website claims that the course will “accommodate golfers of every caliber” this was not the case due to a very condescending marshal. On the SECOND hole he drove up and said it was obvious I was a new golfer and that I would feel “less pressure” and “enjoy the experience more” if we played on the par 3 course. No idea why he felt qualified to determine that I felt too pressured to enjoy my day, but it was an unnecessary, rude suggestion. There was no one around us, we weren’t clogging the course up, we had literally just started playing. My husband said we had booked this package through the hotel so it is what it is, and the marshal proceeded to mansplain that if the group behind us caught up we would need to let them play through. We were already planning on doing this because again, my husband is an experienced golfer and he fully understands the etiquette. I know for a fact that I wasn’t the only beginner on the course but I felt singled out and uncomfortable for the rest of the round. For the record, if there was a group behind us they never got anywhere close to catching up. If you’re a beginner looking for a fun day of golfing, avoid...