Railside Golf Club

Detailed description of Railside Golf Club

Railside Golf Club is a Public, 12 hole golf course located in Gibson City, Illinois. Gibson City is in the heart of Central Illinois between Champaign-Urbana and Bloomington-Normal.

Railside Golf Club first opened for play in 1993. The course was designed by Paul Loague.

Railside's greens are strikingly undulating, with false fronts, false sides and enough camel-backs to make you think you are in Arabia. If you don't put the ball in the right part of the green, you're as likely as not to three-putt.

Getting to the green isn't t easy. Most are fronted by bunkers or are set at angles to the fairways. This means most aren't to a run-up shot. Instead, you're forced on most holes to fight the wind and the contouring of the greens to fly the ball as close as possible to the cup.

The wind on any given day can add two or more clubs to every shot.

In 2017 the course was downsized from 18 to 12 holes.

"We think that 12 holes is the place to be, " said Guy Percy, president of the group that runs The Railside Golf Course.

At one point in 2017, the group had hoped to purchase the original 18-hole, 197-acre Railside course. That wasn’t feasible, so it settled for 117 acres and converted it to 12 holes.

“We’re so much better off,” Percy said. “We’ve got a lot less expense. Now we can get by with one greens mower, one fairway mower, one of about every piece of equipment where we would have needed two."

“We’re renovating all of our bunkers, and that would have been about 22 more bunkers to renovate at 3,000 (dollars) a pop that we don’t have to renovate. There’s a lot less labor, a lot fewer chemicals without that 80 acres.”

And the smaller course is more flexible. People can play six, 12 or 18 holes. And there’s still enough capacity to accommodate big outings of 100 golfers or so, the News-Gazette reported.

“We were so disappointed that we couldn’t buy it all, but I think we’re way ahead only get 12 of it. 

When the course was 18 holes...

Par for the course was 72. From the back tees, the course played to 6,755 yards. From the forward tees, the course played to 5,156 yards. The longest hole on the course was # 6, a par-5 that played to 599 yards. The shortest hole on the course was # 7, a par-3 that played to 156 yards from the back tees.

# 6, the 599-yard par-5 challenge was the #1 handicap hole on the course. The easiest hole at Railside Golf Club was # 17, a 170 yard par-3.