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Ellington Golf Center
125 West Road (Route 83)
Ellington, CT
(860) 872-9574
Map

Our Review

• Last Reviewed: 7/24/2006
• By: Chris (MiniGolf CT Staff)
• Overall Rating (1-5): 3
• Maintenance: 3
• Creativity: 3
• Price: 3 ($5.50 adult, $4.50 children)
• Fun: 4
• Difficulty: 2 (Below average)
• Par: 50
• Other features: 9-hole Par 3 golf course, driving range, ice cream

The Ellington Golf Center is an unpretentious course. It's a simple, straightforward, standard mini golf course that you'll enjoy for the fun of it, but not for originality or anything ground-breaking. Speaking of ground-breaking, the course is not laid into the ground, but rather, each green sits on top of the ground. It is very sturdy, but it is interesting because I haven't seen many courses like it.

The putter selection, unlike most courses, consists of metal heads, and by their lack of uniformity, it looks like they were former rentals, or something. I couldn't tell exactly. Like the rest of the course, they were functional and decent, not top-of-the-line.

You have standard holes here: a windmill (that will stop your ball if you aren't careful), a two-tiered hole, and similar. Some of the paint looked tired, especially one ramp where the ball rattled around on its way down, but it's not too bad. The sixth hole "Paddle" is strange, because the sole purpose of the paddle appears to be stopping the ball in the middle of the green. This is why the par is 4, but you can putt around it for a 2. The pars tend to be very generous on this course, which is why the difficulty is 2/5.

One hole that is quite challenging is #12 "Rocket." There's a rocket over the hole, and the hole itself is raised a fair bit, so you have to putt up a metal surface to get the ball in the hole. I decided to see how many strokes it took me, 6-stroke-limit my foot. For the par 4 that it was, I scored an 8.

Overall, while I can't put the course in the same league as the MiniGolf CT Recommended set, it's a solid course that you'll have fun at. If you're ever in the area, it's worth stopping by and playing a round. Overall rating 3/5.

Bonus tip: After the round, I picked up a Maine Black Bear ice cream - vanilla with black raspberry swirls and chocolate raspberry melt-ins. It was pretty yummy. $2.75 for a 2-scoop.

The Putting Penguin &trade Review
Click the link to see the review on their website.

• Last Reviewed: 2001
• By: Putting Penguin staff
• (All ratings out of 10)
• Difficulty: 3
• Creativity: 8
• Atmosphere: 9

This is one of the most solid mini-golf courses we’ve played. When you think of mini-golf, a course like this one is what should come to mind. Although it wasn’t the flashiest or most creative course we’ve played, all around it what most mini-golfs should aspire to be like. However, the course does have two small downfalls. The first is that instead of having wood or rocks, every hole on the course is lined with a metal wall. Although it makes for a nice uniform look and is painted in vibrant colors, the metal provides very little bounce making some shots that require banking quite difficult. The only other minor drawback is that the par for the course is set much too high for the difficulty level. Three of our five players were well under par and the other two came very close to it. A slightly lower overall par seems more reasonable.

Other than that, this course is well built. All the obstacles are maintained and the holes look newly painted and re-carpeted. The cups are a little wider than normal, making the course a bit easier to play. They are also a bit more shallow, but since they are padded on the bottom there is no threat of the ball bouncing out. Going back to the obstacles, this course has some different ones, such as putting through a cannon or kangaroo. It also features a hole that has a log doing some pendulum action near the cup, which we have yet to see on any other course. This course also has the classic windmill along with a few other moving devices that are staples of classic courses. The final hole was also a bit interesting. You had to putt the ball up a ramp and it went around this spiral thing and depending on where it landed in the spiral, you either won a free game or got up to 3 strokes deducted from your score. Overall, the course was good, the grounds we’re good and the play was good, proving again that a low price course can often outshine its pricey competition.

Webmaster's note: The Putting Penguin is another website with miniature golf course reviews. They have graciously allowed us to repost some of their Connecticut reviews, as long as credit was given to them.

Our Review Criteria

• All numerical criteria are on a basis of 1-5. For most items, 1 is worst, and 5 is best.
• Overall: The reviewer's overall opinion of the course. 1 or 2 is not good. 3 is average, but nothing special. 4 is worth a visit, and 5 is an exceptional course.
• Maintenance: How well the course is kept.
• Creativity: Is this a cookie-cutter type of course, or does it have some flair?
• Price: How does the price of the course compare to the quality?
• Fun: Simply put, how fun is the course?
• Difficulty: 1-5, 1 easiest, 5 hardest