Pine Creek Miniature Golf

Pine Creek Miniature Golf    394 Route 31N, West Amwell, NJ 08551

 Pine Creek Miniature Golf is truly unlike any mini golf course you’ve ever played before. We wish we could tell you that we discovered this gem ourselves, but a mention in the New York Times and it’s crowded parking lot tells you that we are not the first to be in impressed with this course. When you think of miniature golf, you are usually thinking of the boardwalk and beaches, something we will call “tourist mini-golf.” That isn’t a bad thing, and we’ve certainly reviewed some excellent courses like that. Pine Creek however is what we will call “park mini-golf,” and as we’ve continued on our exploration of courses around the country, we are happy to find that this is not the only “park course” around! Not only are you surrounded by nature, but that means there is plenty of space between holes that will allow you to feel well spaced even on the most crowded day. 

Pine Creek is two course spread over twelve acres of beautiful maintained park-like atmosphere with natural streams, trees, and plants. As they say on their website, “you won’t find any plastic giraffes here!” What you will find is some incredibly challenging putts in a gorgeous natural setting. The two courses are called the Upper and Lower course. The Upper Course is a Par 55 (our winner came in at 44) and is known as the easier of the two courses. The Lower Course is a par 65 (our winner came in at 59), and has longer fairways and more challenging Par 4s.When you play the two courses back to back, you realize that the Upper Course is really just a smaller version of the more difficult Lower Course, but that is nothing to shake your head at! Despite the courses being in a natural setting, the greens are extremely well kept and clean, which just adds to the atmosphere. 

Pricing for this course is a bit expensive, but you are paying for the exceptional quality. The Upper Course is $11.99/adult and $10.99/child or senior (add $1/person for the Lower Course price). There also is a $5.99 attendance fee for those who are walking but not playing. You can play both courses for $19.99/person, but we recommend blocking off three hours for a group of 4 to play both courses. Also, be mindful of their summer hours: Monday-Thursday & Sunday they are only open until 6pm, which means you have to start your round by 4:30 (Friday and Saturday they are open until 8pm). 

If we were really to get picky, there are a few things that grind our gears about the course. For one, they do not offer rain-checks for inclement weather, even if you have already begun. We came on a nice day that took an unexpected turn and heard thunder around the 13th hole. After paying full price to begin, we noticed they were selling admittance at a discounted rate with clear signage of their inability to give refunds or rainchecks. While the no-refund policy is pretty standard, we would hope that, especially in a park atmosphere where things could get dangerous with lightening or thunder, management would want to take a little more responsibility for peoples safety. 

Also, we totally understand that golf is a business, and that we should all be happy to have paying customers. However, if you print a rule that says no more than four people per group, you have to honor and enforce it. We saw groups of between five and eight people (mostly 20-30 year olds), and they were actually holding up other groups quite significantly. Because the course is so spread out, it makes it more difficult to jump ahead or (like we did) play the back nine first. 

As we dove into the history of Pine Creek, we realized that there was a time when it looked to be closed forever, only to reopen in 2014. However, the new lease does not included the clubhouse space, which is left empty, and means they only have one Port-A-Potty before you go out on the course. Hopefully someone can come along and add more to the clubhouse to really take the course to the highest level. There are regular bathrooms on the course, but this isn’t something that is really made clear to you unless you know where they are. 

Overall, Pine Creek is an absolutely superb course, but it does have a few little technical flaws we would love to see get upgraded to make this a truly A+ course.