Golf in Dublin, Ohio and the Columbus Weekend Built Around It

Jack Nicklaus grew up in Upper Arlington, learned the game on Columbus grass, and eventually built his own course twenty minutes from where he started. Muirfield Village opened in Dublin in 1974. The Memorial Tournament has run there every spring since 1976.

Most golfers arrive Thursday and fly out Sunday night. Treating Columbus as an airport with a course attached wastes the better half of the trip.

Two Columbus Neighborhoods Worth a Half Day

German Village covers thirty-odd blocks of brick south of downtown, laid by German immigrants in the mid-1800s and saved from the wrecking ball by a preservation society formed in 1960. The Book Loft fills thirty-two rooms of a pre-Civil War building and stays open late. Schiller Park holds the south end, with Shakespeare on the lawn through the summer and a statue of the poet himself that has stood since 1891.

Short North climbs High Street toward the university under steel arches that light up after dark. Gallery Hop lands on the first Saturday of every month, when studios stay open past ten and the sidewalks get properly crowded. North Market sits at the southern edge and has operated since 1876. Jeni's Splendid Ice Creams began in a stall there in 2002, which locals will remind you of within about four minutes.

Muirfield Village and Where Visitors Can Play

Muirfield Village is private. Tournament week is the realistic way onto the property, and Nicklaus has kept redesigning his course since he opened it, most recently tightening the closing stretch that decides the leaderboard.

Public golf around Columbus holds up better than the tournament shadow suggests. Alister MacKenzie, the architect behind Augusta National and Cypress Point, laid out the Scarlet Course at Ohio State, which opened in 1938 and takes outside bookings. Readers who build trips around tee times will find more in our golf lifestyle coverage.

Dublin Beyond the Golf Club

Dublin stopped being a suburb somewhere around 2020, when the Dublin Link footbridge opened across the Scioto and stitched the historic village to the new Bridge Park district on the east bank. The span runs roughly 760 feet on a single tower, and walking it at dusk is the closest thing central Ohio has to a waterfront moment.

The Dublin Irish Festival takes over Coffman Park on the first weekend of August and pulls crowds in the tens of thousands, which is worth knowing if you were planning a quiet August visit. Historic Dublin itself is four walkable blocks of limestone storefronts, and the pub at the corner has poured for locals far longer than the golf crowd has been coming.

Practical Notes Before You Book

• Memorial week falls in late May or early June, and Dublin room rates roughly double

• Muirfield Village sits about fifteen miles northwest of downtown Columbus

• John Glenn Columbus International is six miles east of downtown, the opposite direction

• Ohio in May can swing thirty degrees in a day, so pack a shell you can play in

• Short North dinner reservations during tournament week need a two-week lead

Moving Between Dublin and Downtown Columbus

The geometry works against visitors. Course northwest, airport east, hotels and dinner downtown or along High Street, and a rental car that turns into a liability the moment somebody orders a second glass at Veritas.

A chauffeured car service in Columbus removes the two worst parts, parking and the drive back. Luxury Rides LLC has operated in the city since 2010 and runs CMH transfers alongside sporting event work, which is the experience that counts here. Tournament weeks close roads and reroute traffic around Dublin, and a driver who has made that run before drops your group at the correct gate instead of the one on the far side of the property.

Golf parties travel heavily. Four bags plus four sets of clubs overwhelm a sedan trunk fast, and the company keeps Suburbans, Escalades and Sprinter vans for that exact math. Flight tracking on the return leg matters more than people expect when a Sunday finish runs long and the flight home boards at seven. Booking the service for the full day also solves the awkward middle hours, when the round is over and check-in is still four hours away.

After the Last Putt

Order the fried chicken at The Guild House, or walk down to Lindey's for a table on the German Village patio. Columbus is a small city that behaves like a large one after dark, and the drive back to the hotel belongs to somebody else. Luxury Rides LLC keeps dispatch staffed overnight, which is the detail you appreciate at midnight and forget by morning.