In Columbus, Ohio, Pinnacle Golf Club is well named

The golf cognoscenti know that there are fewer cities, pound-for-pound, with a richer variety of quality private golf clubs than surprising Columbus, Ohio.

The longtime “Big Four” include venerable Scioto Country Club, a recently restored Donald Ross gem that was the boyhood home and training ground for hometown hero Jack Nicklaus. There is Muirfield Village, which is the Golden Bear’s private fiefdom, one of his most impressive designs, and annual home to the Memorial Tournament. There’s The Golf Club, an under-the-radar Pete Dye masterpiece that is his least-known great creation. And finally, the lyrically named Double Eagle, a Tom Weiskopf-Jay Morrish design that is also private golf at its five-star best.

To this impressive list let me add another candidate: The aptly named Pinnacle Golf Club, just 10 minutes from downtown, in Grove City, Ohio. This Lanny Wadkins creation, just a couple of years old, is a striking mixture of golf holes cut amongst hardwood and deep vegetation. The rolling farmland on which the course was fashioned offers plenty of elevation changes, and the ravines, streams and ponds present add plenty of bite to what’s a serenely beautiful golf experience. If Wadkins, a Ryder Cup stalwart and former major champion, has more tricks up his design sleeve like the highly-recommended, thoroughly delightful Pinnacle Golf Club, an up-and-comer in the pantheon of great golf courses in Columbus, he will be a “little known designer” no longer.