Ever since the notorious C.O.V.I.D., golf has had a major resurgence. One could say that I'm…read moretalking about in terms of interest, but what I'm really talking about is the pricing. Most courses are obnoxious with where their greens fee pricing is and in terms of the ROI you get commensurate to course conditions. The area at different times had multiple, what I would call, value play courses but over the past few years things have changed. Tumble Brook closed. Willow Brook closed. Bethlehem Municipal's 9 hole course (no way I'll ever call that a golf club) is a dump and over run with carts. The last man standing is Sawmill. Below is what you're getting into: www.sawmillgolfcourse.com/course-information I've played here a ton this year. Time for the good and bad. Good: Pricing is super cheap. After 3pm it's $15 for a round. Can't beat that anywhere. Overall, tee times are easy to come by. Open year round. No holes are super intimidatingly long. Bad: Course conditions are all over place. Several holes/tees are still decent, lush and green even with the lack of rain this year, while others are near impossible to get a tee in the ground (#7 & #8 currently). Pace of play here can be a major issue. Even when they have rangers here, they're a joke. Either smoking in the parking lot or hanging out at #1 but never getting on to the course to try and undo any logjams. I've done 18 here (always walking - never with a cart - weekdays only) in a touch over three hours and it's also ballooned to around five hours. With that said, are any of the holes here that hard? Not really. No extreme doglegs or water and what sand they have is minimally maintained and plays like hitting off the parking lot asphalt. The only issue here would be elevation. The course is set on a hillside and certain holes like 5, 6, 14 and 15 have some healthy incline to them. If you come, you can either call for tee times or go here: foreupsoftware.com/index.php/booking/20706/5485#/teetimes Is Sawmill a five star course? Of course not, but you're also not paying for a five star course either. To a degree, it's honestly stupid to complain when you're paying $15 or $20. Nothing here is that bad. If you want better, plenty of areas course that will be happy to soak you for many times more than what SM charges but won't have the fun and interesting quirks this place has. Good Enough.

Sawmill used to be a decent value for what it is. While the staff has always been friendly, coarse…read moreconditions used to be, you get what you pay for. The fairways aren't well groomed, in places are plain dirt. In many areas the fairways were like playing from the first cut of rough at better coarses, and sections of some of the greens are like wash boards and unplayable. With the price increases, there are nearby coarses, competitive in price, that are nearly pristine and provide a far more enjoyable playing experience. Unfortunately first the price, Sawmill has become a waste of money.

I came here for a birthday dinner and I was blown away!! I had to pace myself when eating the lamb…read morechops since it was a shared appetizer but I could have eaten the whole plate. I loved it so much I order Lamb as my entree as well lol. I've never heard of baby back spring rolls so I was hesitant to try them but boy am I glad I did!..and the glaze that accompanied it was to die for (I'm drooling as I type). Chef Verdine Hurt and the staff were all sweethearts. I can't wait to go back!

I just went to a company sponsored meeting at the Golf Club, and it was really a wonderful…read moreexperience. I was absolutely taken back by the breathtaking scenery and was a little disappointed that I had to have my back to the windows to watch the presentations with a view like that! The staff was very accommodating, consistently taking plates, refilling water pitchers, cleaning up throughout the day. The food we had for lunch was excellent! Chicken parm and baked ziti had a great red sauce and the lemon chicken was also tender and tasted great. The dinner rolls practically melted in my mouth! My group had about 150 people in attendance and everyone fit in the room well and we weren't stacked on top of each other! It was really a great experience and I hope my company comes back to this club for future events!

A solid golf course, always in good shape, has a friendly staff and reasonable prices.read more

In the past 2-3 years I have visited the course a handful of times and each time my experience has…read morebeen worse and worse. The employees seem to not understand what good customer service is and they are very rude, fowl mouthed, and simply disrespectful. There is trash everywhere. When I was setting my clubs down to go inside to pay no one greeted me and the area had trash and towels all over the place. Then when I received my cart (from the incredibly rude guy that I was told to hand my receipt to) the cart had mud all over the floor and still had trash inside the whole thing!! While on the course I was pleased with how nice and clean it was(for the most part). However while we were playing the ranger must have stopped and said something to us at least 4 times and he was incredibly rude and impolite. Not to mention there wasn't even anyone behind us!! they're also seem to be garbage all over the parking lot, ever right outside the Pro Shop. It was quite a disappointing and just a bad experience the last couple times I played this course.

Wow amazing food as a guest for a Christmas dinner party. The ambiance stellar and service 5…read morestars. Thanks to the great staff for an incredible evening.

Great track in great shape. Starters are engaging and keep things moving. The 19th hole is a great…read moreplace for a drink or a bite after the round.

(Maybe at some point I'll update with pictures to make this a bit more well-rounded, but for now,…read morethis is good enough.) Nothing I love more in life than being the contrarian and finding/enjoying the quirky things that few others do. In terms of a local golf course, Willow Brook checks all of the boxes. The course is located on/shares space with a horse farm. Back in the day it was a traditional 18 hole course, but the configuration has been modified to 9 with the rest of the land being turned into a housing development that is still actively being built by the 8th green & 9th tee. If you look at the map on Yelp, which is of course nicked from Google, it does a poor job explaining the simple basic of how you even get to the course unless you go to the satellite tab. You're either heading down Howertown Road and then going on to at times, basically a single lane drive that snakes through some trees and past a few homes to the parking area or you can ignore the road closed signs on Willowbrook Road and enter via Sappho Cody Lane. The parking is on some grass by a horse competition area. From there you walk down Joe Cody Lane to the shack where you pay. A few randoms: Current hours are 10-4 daily. $20 for 9 or $30 for 18 and it's cash only - all walk with no carts. Not uncommon to find the shack where you're supposed to pay be unmanned with a note taped to one of the sliding glass doors to find them on the course and pay then. So far, I paid once when the guy stopped to say hello as he was mowing the fairway grass and the other time a different guy was doing some work on the green at #4. Three par 3's that start in the 130 yard range up to the two par 5's that go to the mid to upper 400's. Nothing is terribly difficult if you can, lol, keep it relatively straight. The thing I love more than anything is the angle of them not having carts because that keeps the crowds a-way and that is what I'm looking for. The two times I've been here, counting myself, I haven't seen ten people in total out playing (chef's kiss on that one). The course is what you would expect for the price. I'm no pro so I'm not looking for much past a cheap price. To me the fairways and greens are in good enough shape. The only thing they gave up on years ago are the sand traps. They're basically concrete slabs with vegetation growing in them. Also, if you're willing to dig around a bit, plenty of balls in the tall grass and by the creek area that people gave up on. For everyone one I lose, I usually find two. Yeah, this place is odd and quirky and some will be turned off by the no carts but to me, it's beautiful and quiet. As long as the crowds don't suddenly start swarming here during the week, I'm all in for the foreseeable future. willowbrook9.com/

Today we went for lunch at the new Willow Grille at the 9 hole course at Willowbrook Golf Course…read more The atmosphere is rustic with open beams and lots of windows. There's a beautiful patio which has a great view of the course. So relaxing you feel like your out in the country. We ate inside due to the humidity but would choose to sit outside on a cooler day. We ordered burgers which were really good & had a great grilled flavor. Val, our server was friendly and made you feel at home. So nice to know we have a beautiful place to go for lunch right in our backyard!

In a past rambling, I addressed the asi asi situation of the driving range here and after another…read moreround at the 9 hole course I feel I need to address this one as well. So, what do you have? Seven par 4s of which three are shorter than 300 yards and two par 3s. Aside from #4 and #8, all the remaining holes run immediately back and forth next to each other which means people and carts all over the place. OK, what's so off here to make it two stars? Easy. While the fairways are in a little better shape than I've seen them in recent memory (greener with fewer brown/dead spots and not cut so stupidly short to the ground), the greens are simply bad. Hard as hell which equals approach shots being impossible as everything will keep on rolling as if you're hitting it on asphalt. Also, lots of choppy-bumpy uneven spots spots which make putting oh so fun and some interesting pin placements like on #6 where the pin is all the way in the front of the green which is tiered and heavily sloped. I.E., if you're trying to putt from 85% of the green, your ball is rolling back on to the fringe/rough as the slant and speed are abnormal. There's fair and then there is stupid. I get why from a business standpoint they added carts a few years ago but, are they really needed? It's a nine hole course that is about 2,500 yards. It worked well as walk only for decades. Pace of play here is not existent. The majority of the day time weekday clientele is 65-70+ and they do not give a damn how long they take per hole and they sure as hell are not letting you play through. That equals nine holes taking two and a half hours. Insane. Your greens fee covers eighteen holes but who the hell wants to spend five hours playing the same holes twice? $22 is a ripoff. Yeah, I get it. In the modern post pandemic world, golf course pricing is insane. But at the same time, why play here when you can pay $22 and play at Sawmill with much better conditions and with eighteen real holes? Again, I get it. Technically, there are no other courses within the city proper limits of Bethlehem except this place and the 18 hole course across the street. It's a very large captive audience and it serves them well because each place is always busy and packed. To me, if you're going because it's close and just easier, I get that. But sure as hell don't play here because you think it's nice because, honestly, it's not.

Decent course after maintenance is done, which is very rare. Pro shop workers at both the 18 and 9…read morehole courses are complete a-holes they just have this tone and attitude they use that makes you want you to shoot a 120. All the times I've gone, there has been this very sweet and kind older woman so I'm thankful there's something positive about that place!

This place stinks. We had a noon tee time on a Sunday in June and these dopes let three fivesomes…read morego out in front of us. We called and complained because every tee box was a 15 minute wait but they wouldn't split them up. They let us quit after the front with a 9 hole voucher but definitely won't be using it because we won't be back.

Course is run by unprofessional and rude management. We planned a golf weekend 2 months in advance,…read morewhich is necessary when getting 12+ guys together, some of whom drove in from out of state. None of us live within 90 minutes of the course, so we needed to book a house and we booked tee times at two courses. We do this every year, at least once. Several of us bought a GroupGolfer promotional coupon that was good for a round of golf at JFN, and we planned our weekend around that. We did the same for another Poconos course for Friday, and we had no problem using the vouchers there, or at any other course in the past 10 years, probably literally 50 times. JFN management informed us on the day of our visit, that they would not accept the $49 vouchers that we paid for, and we'd need to spend another $95 to play our round. The reason they gave us was that we made our tee times "too far in advance", which is ridiculous. What business wouldn't want to guarantee their sales as far in advance as possible? That's the point of the promotional coupons and the reason they'd participate in such a promotion to begin with. A course in a vacation area should understand that waiting to book until a week before a Saturday morning tee time is completely unrealistic. People need to plan farther in advance when scheduling a golf weekend. We spent over $1500 at their business today, and we will never go back

Dinner in the Grille room was outstanding The service, the…read morefood and the ambience was 1st class

I had the opportunity to play here with a gracious member on June 24, 2022. What an experience to…read moreplay the Old Course 2 weeks after the US Senior Open was played there!