The course opened in 1963, and for years it was the only eighteen-hole municipal layout on Oklahoma City’s northeast side. That fact matters more than it might seem. Public golf in that part of the city has always been a different proposition than what you get at the private clubs in Nichols Hills or the manicured resort tracks further out. Painted Hills was built for working people, and sixty-plus years later it still is.
Darrell McKinley has been keeping score here since 1989. He grew up in the neighborhood, played junior golf on this course when it cost almost nothing to get on, and now shows up most Saturday mornings with a bag that’s older than some of the staff. Ask him why he keeps coming back when there are newer courses nearby, and he’ll tell you the same thing he’s told me twice: “This course knows who it is.”
That’s an honest way to put it. Painted Hills doesn’t try to be something it isn’t. The layout runs through modest, flat-to-rolling terrain on the northeast side near NE 36th Street, with mature trees lining several of the back-nine holes that make club selection more interesting than the scorecard distances suggest. It’s not a championship track. There are no forced carries over water on every hole, no GPS yardage screens on the carts. What there is: a legitimate test for mid-handicappers, some genuinely tricky greens that break more than they look, and the kind of pace that doesn’t have you waiting ten minutes on every tee box.
Greens fees run roughly $20 to $30 depending on the day and whether you’re walking or riding, which makes it one of the more affordable full rounds you’ll find anywhere in the metro. The cart paths are paved and in decent shape. The clubhouse is small and functional — grab a hot dog and a sports drink before you go out, don’t expect a bistro menu.
The pro shop is run by people who actually play the game. If you show up without a tee time on a weekday morning, there’s a reasonable chance you’ll get out within fifteen minutes. On weekend afternoons, go ahead and call ahead — it gets busy, especially in spring when the rough is thick enough to swallow a bad shot and cost you a sleeve of balls.
What Darrell would probably want me to mention is the junior program. The course has run one in various forms for decades, and it’s where a lot of northeast-side kids have gotten their first real instruction. That kind of continuity doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because a place stays in the community long enough to become part of it.
The course isn’t flashy, and it isn’t trying to be. The fairways won’t photograph the way Scissortail’s lawn does. But Painted Hills has something a lot of newer developments are still working toward: a regular crowd that’s been coming for thirty years and actually knows each other’s names. Darrell still shoots in the low 80s on a good day. He says the course has gotten harder as he’s gotten older. I think he means it both ways.
