Bally Haly Country Club at Clovelly Estates

Bally Haly is the oldest golf club in Atlantic Canada. Ten St John’s gentlemen formed the Newfoundland Golf Club in 1896, and the course itself was built in 1908, off Logy Bay Road.

That course is gone. In a land swap completed in May 2023, the club sold its historic site and moved north to the former Clovelly Golf Course, where it now plays as Bally Haly Country Club at Clovelly Estates. The old ground is being rezoned for around 1,250 homes.

The new home is a 36-hole Graham Cooke facility: a championship South course, par 72, playing from 6,581 to 5,082 yards, and an executive North course, par 61, from 3,716 to 2,934.

What it asks of you

Cooke built the Clovelly courses on rolling Avalon terrain, and the phrase the club uses for them, deceptive drives and dynamic lies, is a fair description: the tee shot rarely finishes where it looked like it would, and the approach is rarely played from flat ground.

The South is the course a visitor comes for. A spread of 1,500 yards between the front and back tees is wide, which means the card can be set to almost any standard, and choosing the wrong set is the commonest visitor mistake here.

The North is a genuine executive course rather than a pitch and putt, and at a par 61 it is long enough to be a round rather than a warm-up.

What players say about it

The club takes members and the public, and its move was heavily covered in Newfoundland. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the courses, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• Having 36 holes on one site is unusual in Newfoundland and is the first thing reviewers mention.
• The Cooke design is well regarded, and the South appears in Canadian rankings.
• Conditioning is generally reported as good.
• The club is open to the public as well as members, which the old Bally Haly was not to the same degree.
• The Avalon setting and the views are frequently mentioned.

What comes up against

• The loss of the 1908 course still rankles with people who played it, and the move divided the membership.
• The Newfoundland season is short and the weather is the weather.
• Green fees are high by provincial standards.
• The two courses are of very different standard, and a visitor who books the wrong one is disappointed.

Getting there and when to go

The club is at Clovelly Estates in the east end of St John’s, about fifteen minutes from the city centre and twenty from the airport.

The season runs roughly from May to October. July and August are the reliable months. Tee times are booked in advance.

Green fees

Rates are set by the club. See the club’s own site.

How this page was made

The factual frame comes from public sources: OpenStreetMap for the location of the current course, the club’s published history and Newfoundland press coverage from 2023 to 2025 for the 1896 founding, the 1908 course, the land swap with Clovelly and the rezoning of the old site, and the club’s own course pages for the Graham Cooke design, the pars and the yardages. OpenStreetMap still carries the closed Logy Bay Road course under the club’s name; the coordinates on this page are those of the course now in play. The opinion section summarises public reviews read in September 2026; we report recurring themes rather than individual voices, and we reproduce no quotations.

We have not played these courses, and this page is no substitute for a round. The club has not paid for this page, has not seen it before publication and has no say over its content. If you know the courses and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.