The Marshes Golf Club

The Marshes opened at Kanata in the summer of 2002, one of the last courses Robert Trent Jones Senior and Junior designed together. It sits inside an Audubon certified wildlife sanctuary, running through wetland, hardwood forest and open meadow.

It is a par 72 of 7,026 yards, with bent grass greens and bluegrass fairways, and its card is six par 3s, six par 4s and six par 5s.

What it asks of you

Six of each is a card almost nobody builds, and it changes the round completely. A standard par 72 has ten par 4s, which means most holes ask the same two questions. Here a third of the holes are reachable in one and a third are not reachable in two, so the driver and the wedge each get used far more than usual and the mid-iron far less.

Six par 5s also means six genuine scoring chances for a long hitter and six holes where a short hitter is playing for five. The spread of scores on this course is wider than the rating suggests.

The wetland is not decoration. Building through an Audubon sanctuary constrains where earth can be moved and where water can be crossed, and the routing shows those constraints honestly.

What players say about it

This is a public course attached to a hotel, and it is well covered in the Ottawa guides. The points below summarise what recurs. These are other people’s opinions, not ours: we have not played the course, and we name and quote no one.

What comes up in its favor

• The unusual card, with six holes of each par, is what reviewers name first once they notice it.
• Conditioning is consistently well reported, greens in particular.
• The wetland and forest setting inside a certified sanctuary is frequently praised.
• It is repeatedly called the best public course in Ottawa.
• The Robert Trent Jones name, on one of the last father and son collaborations, draws visitors.

What comes up against

• Green fees are high for the Ottawa market.
• At 7,026 yards it is long, and the six par 5s punish a short hitter.
• The wetland means insects in early summer.
• The Ontario season is short.

Getting there and when to go

The course is at Kanata in the west end of Ottawa, about twenty-five minutes from downtown and twenty from the airport.

The season runs roughly from April to October. June and September give the best of it; the wetland is at its worst for insects in late May and June. 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, encyclopaedic entries and the club’s own pages for the 2002 opening, the Robert Trent Jones Senior and Junior design and the Audubon certification, and public course records for par, yardage, grass types and the distribution of holes. 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 this course, 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 course and something here is wrong or out of date, write to us and we will correct it.