Ron Jaworski's RiverWinds Golf & Tennis Club, West Deptford, NJ

This is a really good course. Top 20 in the state. The 17th hole resembles Pebble Beach. I would highly recommend. Though the windy conditions does make this course a bit tough at times.

Played this course yesterday and found it in good shape for this time of the year. The marshals were courteous but the course was not crowded. The two things that were lacking was not having the hole layouts on the score card and the lack of place to get a snack at the turn. There was no cart person availble that day. I would go back and play this course in the near future.

This course is well maintained, very long, and fairly wide open. There weren't many unique holes with the exception of the 17th, a beautiful elevated par 3 overlooking the Deleware river while hitting onto somewhat of an island green. This by far was the best hole on the course. Some holes, however, did provide a challenge requiring you to hit over waste land to begin the hole or cross it further down the fairway. The scenery was nice, sitting on the banks of the Delaware River with the skyline of Philadelphia visible on a few holes. Rabbits also abound everywhere which was neat to see. They do have logo balls for the logo ball lover like myself, a huge plus. The value of $40 to walk twilight weekend is definately a bit on the high side, but not terrible. I wouldn't pay more than this to play here. With all the nice things about the course, the worst part by far were the amenities. It was 90 degrees on a crowded Saturday June afternoon and every single water cooler was bone dry. Absolutely ridiculous. Finally on the 14th hole I flagged a ranger down and he informed me that they just filled the coolers and water would be available on the 16th hole. Well 15 holes without water, minimum of 3 hours of play, is totally unacceptable. I'm pretty sure this doesn't happen routinely, at least I hope not, but this aspect alone really hurt my opinion of the course as your game suffers when your dehydrated. I'd give this course another shot and would recommend you play it at least once. Overall rating, B+

Ditto to Rlyons comment from July. My friends and I were out at the course this past weekend and the marshals were unbearable. They followed us around and litterally joined our group for even a few holes pushing us. What a hassle and a horrible experience. As for the course, the greens are absolutely horrible as the grass on them is about a thick as the fairways. The only green that I have played on that are worse than these are the ones at the chip and putt near my house. I will say the fairways were in good condition to try to give a little balance to my review, however, I would still find it really hard to recommend this course. I know I will not be going back.

We used to play course when it first opened, then stopped after conditions deteriorated. Heard things had improved so tried again on a Saturday mid-morning, 7/17/10. Unfortunately it rained heavily the day/night before so it was cart path only. Pros include....the course was decently maintained....fairways, tee boxes, bunkers, and greens all in good shape. Rough was not very long....could find balls easily, contrary to earlier reviews. Holes are well designed and spaced apart from other fairways....rare to have another group in your fairway. Scenery is nice but vegetation has grown along river so river views are pretty much limited to only two holes, 16 and 17. Cons....greens are huge and there is no flag placement system....lots of 50-60 foot putts because its hard to tell pin location and can easily select wrong club. Only one (very foul smelling) porta potty on course (at 1st and 10th tee box). Hole marker maps are placed on opposite side of blue tees....cannot see from cart path or if you use another tee box. Towels on ball washers were shredded, appear not to have been changed in weeks/months. Yes, cart paths need repair but not as bad as other reviews make them out to be. The first tee box seems like a mile away from the clubhouse so you play 18 holes without a regular bathroom and snack bar. They need to have a halfway house after the 9th green. I also submitted these suggestions to the director of golf on their website but received no reply. At $65, value is average at best....after 11am, price reduces to $55. Its a nice course and would play again but not on a semi-regular basis until these improvements are made.

I like the layout of this course, and maintenance is better than last year. HOWEVER - the aging marshalls were over bearing, pushy, and interrupting. The marshalls ruined our round of golf. The management of this course is lacking and this is not the first time the marshalls have acted like police abusing authority. My friends and I were obeying every course rule and had groups in both front and back of us and the marshalls followed us 9 out of 16 holes. That's right 16 holes, becuase the Marshall made us skip holes and would not let us tee off after 8:20pm. Keep in mind this was July and the sun was up and our tee time was 4:20pm. If you want people off your course before the sun goes down, don't let a foursome tee off at 4:20. Not a good experience and we will not be going back anytime soon.

I have played this course twice. The grounds are kept up nicely, short cut fairways, long rough... I mean long cut rough. You can easily loose a ball in the rough. You need to keep your ball in the fairways as much as possible. Lots of sand bunkers and some water hazards. The cart pats are in the process of being replaced and are in very poor condition at this time. Over all a fun course to play and a convienient location.

Played this course on Sunday, I have to admit, this has got to be one of the worst golf course in Woodbury/Deptord areas or perhaps in NJ. First, the cart path is all loose gravel, with a bunch of pot holes lining the way as you drive on the cart path. Felt like some times the cart was going to tip over when driving on this pot hole ladened cart path. Secondly, if you don't hit your ball onto the fairway, you will lose your ball. There is no fringe, or first cut, it is all rough and very thick rough. No maintenance on this course what so ever. The greens just had been aerated, with no mentioned of it when checking in for our tee time. If I had known this, I would not have played. Sand covered all of the greens and made putting useless. This course was very difficult to say the least with the very tall weeds or so called rough that looks like it hasn't been cut in a very long while. Not worth the money or effort to play this course. I played Valley Brook as well and must say it was 100% better maintained and was very well groomed but you can tell by the difference between the two golf course with Valley Brook winning hands down. We only saw one cart lady with drinks the whole day. Course looked very ragged. Also, the course is not marked well while driving your cart. No sense of direction as to where the next hole is. Signs are very small, and very low to the ground. Score card is very simple, only hole number, and par and yardage information. You could buy the book for $5.00 to show you everything about the layout of the course, but for the money to play one round; this should be included into the scorecard. The staff seemed unhelpful to say the least when asking questions about the course. I will not EVER play this course again.

The course is under new mgmt. (Ron Jaworski's Group) In fact Jaws was there yesterday on the 1st tee, so it seems he is actively involved in managing the place and trying to bring it back around. The course was in decent shape and $45 on weekend makes this one of the better bargains.

There is sand back in the bunkers, some are better than others. There was a lot of standing water on the course due to all the rain recently. I would say that at least half of the greens have some minor bare patches, but the pin placements were no where near these spots. The greens are a little slow with not much break but they are in decent shape. Better than those over at Ramblewood. Probably on par with Wedgewood.

The course layout is a good one. Some real nice holes. Avoid the cart paths if you can. There are pot holes everywhere. They really need to just pave these instead of trying to fill them in and be done with it. There is no clubhouse or snack shop so grab the cart when you can. You may only see her once or twice though on the course.

There are still no practice facilities. No range, no practice green, bunkers, etc.

This course was really nice when it first opened about 8 or 9 years ago, for about a 1year of 2. Then they started losing money and tried to save $$$ on course maintenance, which led to its bid decline. Then they put no money into it as they tried to sell it. Now that its under Jaws mgmt, I hope they really try to bring the course conditions back to what it used to be. This course has a great design and is very challenging, especially with the wind coming off the river.

YARDAGE MARKERS - This course needs more markers. Even the 200, 150, 100 yard steaks are difficult to locate (only on one side of the course) No sprinkler heads with markings, etc. I forgot to bring my GPS with me and paid dearly for it. Misclubbed all day long.

A pretty tough course but with absolutely no amenities. This place is all about tennis, there's no clubhouse and nowhere to get something to eat or drink after a round, you have to go to the Wawa a couple of blocks away.

We played on Sunday morning, i'm sorry we hunted for golf balls on sunday morning, this course is in serious need of a grass cutting. The greens were bumpy and scarred up, the yardage markers were hard to locate.
if you hit your ball two feet off the fairway it was lost in the i wouldn't call it rough jungle is a better term. it was horrible.
money is tough now a days and you want to get whatn you pay for not here your better off throwing your money in the trash can.
i would not recomend this course to anyone who enjoys a nice round of golf. there's more sand in the trunk of my car than there is on this golf course, my recomendation is shut this place down and fix it or just keep it closed.
by the way if happen to play here i'm still looking for my titelist pro-v that landed a foot off the green on hole number 2

course is still in really bad shape. greens were bumpy and painfully slow. took me 11 holes to finally be able to swing my putter that hard. still no sand in bunkers mainly water. i also struggled to find yardage markers. all of that for 50$. this course wasnt worth 20. hopefully next year they can bring it back because it sure isnt playable right now.

Still has a long ways to go, I'd stay away till the 2009 season...

Why?

1. Cart paths are horribly bumpy; I've got blood in my urine tonight after playing this morning:)
2. Greens, in my opinion, are pretty bad. All had been aerated this week, which they told us on the first tee box (AFTER coughing up $55). Many had 1-2 inch deep holes filled with sand scattered about. One had crop circles on it, I assume from improper application of fertilizer? Really, the greens are better at Beckett, and that's saying something around this area...
3. Scorecard doesn't provide any idea of the hole layout, and the majority of tees aren't marked with a hole layout, either. Should have paid $6 for the yardage booklet...
4. To me, a high-handicapper, the course is pretty tough. I can accept that when the greens are nice, and conditions overall are good. It was clearly designed for a better than average golfer. The problem is that layout is for a player, the price is for the player, but the conditions are for the weekend municipal course hacker. It's not worth it to lose a slightly errant tee shot in waist-high fescue 5 yards off the fairway, only to finally get on the 35-yard-deep severely sloped green and find a pock-marked putting surface.
5. I almost forgot about the bunkers!!! Most of them were dirt, no sand at all. The ranger told us that they were "under repair", and the sand was on it's way...

Really, the more I look back on this experience, the most I think they should've asked for about $20. I know fertilizer is expensive and all, but just close the course until it's ready for play. And the cart boy offering to clean my clubs at the end was just laughable...

I arrived at the course with low expectations after reading the previous reviews. All in all, I would have to say that the layout is tremendous, offering one of the few courses in the area where you can actually hit more drivers than woods off the tees. The course was in moderate condition, but it was clear that the new management is putting forth the effort to get the place back up to speed. I hope they do because this course has serious potential to be an excellent tournament level course.

The fairways are in very good condition. The greens are a work in progress, but weren't bad enough to ruin the experience. If management continues to put in the time, the greens should be back in a couple of months. Many of the bunkers are still overrun, but the ownership has made clear progress in bringing many of them back to solid, playable conditions. The rough was well kept and full of grass. The fescue is a little much, and lines many of the holes. You can pretty much say goodbye to anything you hit in there. I think it probably needs to get cut back on a few of the holes, but it does add some difficulty to a course with very wide fairways.

The cart paths are gravel and in fair condition. Some areas are worse than others because they are hard to maintain in poor weather. The carts are new Yamaha gas carts. Some of the holes have new stone hole markers with the hole layout and yardages, while others do not or have something that looks around 50 years old. I assume they are in the process of replacing all with the new markers.

I enjoyed the course very much, and for just a $35 twilight rate, few public courses in South Jersey provide better value. This course seems to be improving nicely, with serious potential to become one of the best courses in the area. How often do you get to play 7000+ with no houses on any of the holes...for under $40?? As long as you don't mind the "interesting" facilities, RiverWinds is worth your time and money.

(I have played Riverwinds frequently since it was built 7 years ago...about 4 times this year since February) Riverwinds is a course that changed ownership over the winter and the old owners did not take care of the course during their last 8 months of ownership. This is why the course got so run down. The initial conditions of the spring were horrible. The old owners took all there equipment, tools, etc.(including sand out of the traps) when they left over the winter. It took a while to get new equipment thus it explains the harsh reviews in April and May. The course definately deserves the reviews for how the course looked and played during this bad transitional period. Now let me tell you what a difference a few good weeks of care (and new equipment) does to get back on the right track. The tee boxes are fine, the fairways look great, the greens are recovering very nicely from being grooved(syringed??not sure if this is the right term) and only show a few bad spots on them. About 75% of the rough has been cut back and a couple more dry days and the rest will also be done. The sand has been delivered and sits behind the maintanence shed. Once the equipment comes in to do the work the traps will also be done. The cart paths have been improved a bit but do need some more correcting which the employees say will happen. The layout is incredible and will never disappoint. Overall big improvements have been made and the course is coming along nicely at this point. Needed improvements stand at Bunkers, cart paths, and continued care for greens, rough, and fairways.

You can tell this was once a really nice course. Now it is extremely run down. Also no real amenities to speak of. For $65 it is not close to worth it I am sorry to report. You will lose a ton of balls unless everything stays in the fairway. Even 1 foot off the green the grass is uncut and very deep. The greens are shot with grooves and dead spots everywhere. Sad state of playability as of May 2008

STAY AWAY. completely un-maintained. greens painfully slow. grooves on nearly all greens. no sand in bunkers. rough probably not cut in 6 weeks. Not worth $45 let alone the $65 they charged. last time they will see my money.