Date played: 10/15/2013
In a lot of ways, Cranbury Golf Club is the last course I played as just a guy who liked to golf.
I say that because five days later, on October 20, 2013, I’d find myself at Hyatt Hills in Clark, the course where a few years later, I would meet a man named Kermit and walk away with a quest to play every public golf course in New Jersey. Everything from that point forward was part of “the journey.” Everything before it, I was just enjoying golf where I could, typically at the courses that friends and I had become comfortable playing.
So Cranbury holds a strange spot on the list. It counts as Number 15, but when I teed off that Tuesday in October, I had no idea I was 14 courses into anything. Why I was on a golf course on a Tuesday, I honestly can’t say. My best guess is that I took a random day off from work. Either way, it was a trip to a new-to-me course before that truly became an endeavor for me.
First, a bit of trivia: despite the name, Cranbury Golf Club isn’t actually in Cranbury. It sits on Southfield Road in West Windsor, which puts it in Mercer County rather than Middlesex.
In fairness to anyone who’s confused, the course itself seemed a little unsure for a while. The back of my 2013 scorecard lists the address as “49 Southfield Road, Cranbury, NJ 08512”. By the time I picked up a card in 2016, the same “49 Southfield Road” had moved to “West Windsor, NJ 08550”. Same course, same road, same phone number, different town. From all accounts that I could find about the geography and districting of the area, Southfield Road has always been in West Windsor.
The back of the 2013 card: 49 Southfield Road, Cranbury, NJ
Three years later: 49 Southfield Road, West Windsor, NJ
The course was laid out by Gary Rhenn in 1964, and some redesign work was done in the 1990s by Stephen Kay. If that name sounds familiar, it’s the same architect behind Scotland Run and Raritan Landing, the par-58 I played as Number 4.
At 6,057 yards from the blue tees and a par of 71, Cranbury won’t overpower anyone on length. It’s a flat, tree-lined parkland course that’s very easy to walk. What it does have are small, bunkered greens with plenty of movement, and a scorecard quirk you don’t see often: six par-3s, balanced out by five par-5s.
Two of those one-shotters stand out. The 4th plays 227 yards from the blues, which is a lot of club for a par-3 at a public course. The 14th is a similar test, 198 yards with a water carry almost the entire way. The rest of the par-3s are shorter, but with greens this small, they aren’t giveaways either.
I’ve been back plenty of times since that first round – like in the X post below – and my opinion of Cranbury hasn’t changed much. It’s an everyman’s course. It would be tough to hold it in any real esteem, but it’s firmly middle-of-the-road: not the best public in the state, and not the worst. It’s the kind of place you book when you just want to get out and play. On a random Tuesday in October 2013, that’s exactly what I did, with no idea it would be the last stop before the journey began.
