I headed up to York on Monday night, as I really wanted to check out some of the area’s courses. Pennsylvania (at least the South-Central area) is one of my favorite areas for golf in the Mid-Atlantic because the courses are always in great shape.

My morning round was at Royal Manchester, which appeared to be the best public course in the York area. For some reason you won’t find Royal Manchester on the list of best public courses in the state, but after playing here I think it should be!

First, the maintenance at Royal Manchester was phenomenal. In a typical year, I’ll probably play 50 different courses representing all levels of conditions. I feel it is safe to say that Royal Manchester will be within the top three courses that I’ll play all year when it comes to the maintenance. And my round was only $40!

Not a blade of grass was out of place and everything looked as good as it seems in my pictures. The fairways and tees were full, cut short, and looked like carpet. The greens were bordered by two different apron cuts and there was a first cut of rough off of the fairways. The rough was thick and all I could do was chop it out.

The greens were smooth, quick, and on the firm side. The condition of the greens were unbelievable considering that the course lost the greens last year due to some bad chemicals. There are a couple articles online that you can find, but the maintenance crew has done great job getting this place put back together.

I enjoyed the layout just as much as the conditions. Royal Manchester (a Timothy Freeland design) is a links-style course with wide fairways and large greens. Fescue-covered mounds separate the holes so that play from the other holes isn’t a distraction. The course is newer, built in 2010, and there are some openings to bounce approaches up onto the green. The necks aren’t always wide so your best bet is still going to be flying the ball to the green.

I played the black tees which play 73.7/127/6962. The biggest difficulty is probably going to be all the mid-length par-4’s and getting the angles right off the tees. The fairways are wide, but they aren’t the easiest to hit because they have some slope.

The only real knock against Royal Manchester I can see is that the scenery isn’t great. Royal Manchester is in an industrial area on the edge of the Susquehanna River. The river cannot be seen from the course, but the nearby Brunner Island Power Plant (coal-fired) can be seen from almost every spot on the course.

If you like infrastructure, then you’ll want to look upstream when you stand on the 2nd or 16th tee boxes. I saw another power plant through the trees and come to find out that was Three Mile Island Power Plant, which was the site of a partial nuclear meltdown in 1979!

If Royal Manchester was on a more scenic piece of property then I think you’d see it among the top public courses in Pennsylvania. I’d highly recommend a round here if you get a chance!

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):