Stark County’s The Quarry is not one of the closed golf courses in Ohio

• The Quarry, annexed by Canton in 2007, was in danger of joining other area golf courses that have closed.
• The current ownership describes what was done to revitalize the business.
• The Cincinnati Bengals are planning a party at The Quarry a year after the Raiders stopped by.

Quarry is located in a hilly part of Stark County where all the roads have curves.

So do many of the 18 holes on the golf course, which opened in 2006 and was in danger of closing a few years ago.

Elevation drops seem steep enough to pop your ears. Rock walls from the days when the Quarry was just a quarry cast shadows on ponds and streams in a retreating form.

The peaceful, easy feel subsides when the course is full and play is slow enough for golfers to count the houses on adjacent properties.

But such is life in the big city when your lane is in demand. And yes, The Quarry is in Canton, as of 2007, when the city jumped the boundaries of two townships to annex it.

Quarry originally came in when other Stark County public courses were going out. Edgewood, Tam O’Shanter, Skyland Pines, Rolling Green, Lake View and Seven Hills have all closed since The Quarry opened, two miles as the crow flies from the historic Clearview Golf Club.

Doug Titko says The Quarry would have joined the list of golf venues that became something else. Partly to make sure it didn’t, he, his brother and three other partners bought it in 2019.

“The reputation was that it was a beautiful track, but it was so expensive to play,” said Titko, whose business interests include having owned four Audi Horizon shops. “It was my and my brother’s favorite course to play. It’s absolutely unique.

“I worked on a formula for a week and said, I think we can double and maybe triple the amount of games just by addressing the time windows.

“Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, based on going through their old tee sheets, they just didn’t get anyone to play in the morning.

“Who can play these days? Seniors. I put together a senior special from the get-go that we still honor. Monday through Thursday…weekends…we dropped all the prices.

“Our first year we more than tripled the rounds they had ever had out here.

“When we came in, they had three season memberships. We put together a big breakfast the first day we were open and sold 54 season tickets. We’re up to over 100 now.”

It is the fifth year for the current ownership group.

A long conversation with Titko makes this almost a rhetorical question: So the plans are to keep The Quarry open as a golf course for the long term?

“Absolutely,” he said.

Titko, 62, grew up in Brimfield and played football for Field High School. He attended the University of Akron and envisioned a career in sports broadcasting.

“I quickly realized there wasn’t a lot of money in it,” he said.

His father introduced him to golf, which became a lifelong interest.

He has played golf pretty much everywhere, in most of the 50 states. He was part of a match at Skyland Pines on the last day it was open in 2021.

“The Skyland closing was unique because Amazon was interested in the property,” he said. “They would probably still be a course if that hadn’t happened.

“I was very surprised Seven Hills closed. It was under new ownership. The owners came out here looking for some ideas. It seemed sudden when they shifted gears and decided to sell.”

Golf enthusiast Gary Taylor, founder of InfoCision Management Company, was the primary owner of The Quarry in the beginning. Taylor’s family retained a stake in the company after he died in 2013 at age 59. The family also retained ownership of a Medina golf course, Shale Creek.