On the evening of September 17, Little Bear Golf Club lit up its disc golf baskets and turned its 11-hole par-3 course into a course you play by headlamp and glow disc. The Glow Golf Series Championship drew a crowd that had nothing to do with tee times. That single night says more about what this Lewis Center property has become than anything on its scorecard.
Drive past Little Bear Loop off South Old State Road and it still reads as a neighborhood golf course, the kind that comes with a subdivision and a name like Little Bear Village. That description was accurate once. It is no longer the whole story.
What The Course Used To Be
Little Bear opened as a daily-fee golf course in the mid-2000s, designed by golf course architect Dr. Michael Hurdzan on hybrid grass with 22 sand traps, three lakes, a stone waterfall, and more than 1,000 trees planted across the grounds. The 11 holes run short by design, ranging from roughly 100 to 170 yards, built as a walking-only course where a full round takes an hour instead of an afternoon. A 14,000-square-foot banquet facility with a walkout and a balcony overlooking the course sat on the property from early on, built for the kind of golf-and-banquet business model that a lot of suburban par-3 courses tried in the 2000s.
That model is a tough one to sustain on 11 holes. A short course limits how much a club can charge per round, and walking-only golf caps how many groups can move through in a day. Somewhere along the way, the course needed a second reason for people to show up.
The 2020 Sale Changed What The Course Was For
New ownership acquired Little Bear in 2020 and by 2021 had remodeled the course, replacing the natural greens and tee boxes with synthetic turf and adding a professional-grade 18-hole mini golf course. Synthetic turf is a different bet than a green-fees business. It costs more upfront, but it holds up to constant foot traffic in a way natural turf does not, and it does not go dormant or slow down in a Central Ohio winter the way bentgrass greens do. That is a surface built for volume and for shoulder-season play, not for a course trying to protect a handful of premium tee times.
The mini golf course was the second signal. A club chasing traditional golfers does not need putt-putt. A club trying to give a family, a birthday party, or a work group something to do for two hours does.
| Before 2020 | Since 2021 | |
|---|---|---|
| Greens and tees | Natural hybrid grass | Synthetic turf |
| On-site activities | 11-hole par-3 golf only | Golf, 18-hole disc golf, 18-hole mini golf, seasonal glow golf |
| Evening programming | Standard tee times | Glow Golf Series events, private bookings at The Wenbeck |
| Typical weekly hours | Traditional golf-course schedule | Wednesday through Friday, 3 to 8 p.m., Sunday noon to 5 p.m., closed Monday and Tuesday |
Disc Golf Did What Golf Alone Couldn't
The clearest evidence that the strategy worked is not the golf reviews. It is the disc golf reviews. Little Bear layered an 18-hole disc golf course through the same acreage as its ball golf holes, complete with water hazards and a pro shop stocked with used-disc bins and new stock from Disc Golf Mart. Regular players have pointed to the ace bounties as a running incentive to come back, and at least one review of the course called out that Little Bear gave Columbus-area disc golfers amenities, a real clubhouse, a pro shop, food and drink, that the sport in this region simply did not have until this course opened its layout to it. One frequent player mentioned paying around ten dollars for a round or roughly a hundred dollars for a yearly membership, informal pricing shared player to player rather than posted rates, but it points to a business built on repeat, casual visits rather than one big round a year.
That is the opposite of how a traditional golf club survives. A golf club needs members who show up occasionally and pay a lot. A disc golf crowd shows up constantly and pays a little each time. Little Bear built infrastructure for both, but the volume clearly comes from the disc golfers walking the same fairways as the 11-hole golfers.
The Wenbeck Turns The Course Into A Venue
The banquet facility on the property now operates under its own name, The Wenbeck at Little Bear, and it books weddings and corporate events on a property that still has a working golf course wrapped around it. Corporate clients booking there have specifically pointed to the putting course as the reason the venue works for a group event, since it gives guests something low-stakes to do between rounds of conversation, unlike a banquet hall with nothing but a bar.
That is a small design choice with a real effect. A wedding venue with a golf course attached is one thing. A wedding venue where guests can wander over to an 18-hole putting green mid-reception, with no membership or tee time required, is a venue built around the same insight as the disc golf course: give people something to do that does not require them to be golfers.
A Golf Course That Keeps Evening Hours
Little Bear's posted hours run Wednesday through Friday from 3 to 8 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m., with the course closed entirely on Monday and Tuesday. That is not a schedule built around golfers wanting an early tee time before work. It is a schedule built around people who want somewhere to go after work, on a weekday evening or a Sunday afternoon, for an hour or two rather than a full day.
The Glow Golf Series Championship on September 17, 2026, fits that same pattern. A glow event only works as evening programming, and running a championship-level glow night says the property has built a base of players willing to come out after dark, not just golfers chasing a Saturday morning tee time.
None of this makes Little Bear a bad golf course. The original design is still there, the sand traps and the lakes and the waterfall haven't gone anywhere, and the 11 holes still play the way Hurdzan laid them out. What changed is what the property is for. A course that once needed to fill tee times now fills an evening calendar with glow golf nights, disc golf regulars stopping by after work, mini golf groups, and wedding parties at The Wenbeck. The golf is still there. It is no longer the reason most people show up.
If you have watched a familiar corner of Lewis Center turn into something you did not expect, from Evans Farm's storefronts to the Founders Festival's new address to a par-3 course that now runs glow nights, that kind of shift is worth paying attention to, whether you are settled in Little Bear Village or just curious about what is changing nearby. The Linda Rano Jonard Team keeps an eye on these changes because they shape what a neighborhood feels like to live in, not just what a house is worth. If you want to talk through what else has shifted around Lewis Center lately, reach out anytime.
