I can sum up my review by saying "Worst course I've ever played".
We had not played here since the new owners had taken over but we had played here numerous times when it was Boulder Creek. On their webpage they write about new owners taking over, having "purchased the course in 2020" and were "making significant investments to improve everything! Yes, everything!". We looked at recent reviews which were only two kinds of reviews 1) "This is the best course I have ever played" (I later found that these people are either friends, paid for advertisement, or have never played another course). Or 2) "This is the worst course I have ever played". Didn't really tell us much so we decided to give it a try. With the claims that their "TURF is getting the love and care it deserves. Regrowth is underway" we figured we might be in for a treat and this was a possible hidden gem.
In this case I'm not sure how a golf course can be purchased and the new owners/staff can make the course significantly worse than it was previously. Regarding course conditions, when taking a shot there was four possibilities of the lie you would be hitting from your next shot. These four conditions are:
1) Dirt/Mud
2) Weeds/Clover
3) Crab/Torpedo Grass
4) Agricultural Crops
You could find most of these conditions anywhere on the course including tee boxes and greens. There was little to no golf course grass anywhere on the entire course as the only grass was located in front of the club house, which shows where the owner's/team's priority is. The only way to fix course conditions like this is to remove and replace the top 6 inches of dirt and re-seed the entire course.
On the second par 3 of the course, I accidentally took a massive divot out of the teebox. I went over to the cart, grabbed a bottle of sand to repair it. The bottom fell off the sand bottle and sand went everywhere. Having a second bottle on the cart, I grabbed that one, with the exact same results. Which staff member thought it would be funny to pull a prank like this? This is about the same maturity as unscrewing the top of a salt shaker at a restaurant. On the same turf related issues, the greens looked like a combination of the 4 previous conditions, but I don't think a ball mark had been repaired on the greens... Ever.
The bunkers were dirt/mud, with a ¼" layer of sandbox sand, and a smattering or 1 inch stones all through it. I opted to play them all as ground under repair hazards. None of them were raked or maintained at all as there were no rakes anywhere near the bunkers. I could count the rakes I saw throughout the day on one hand. Was this "bring your own rake" to the golf course day and I just didn't get the memo when I booked our tee time?
No distance markers or signage anywhere on the course, everything was a guess. No sprinkler head markings, no teebox signs, no teebox markings. The only thing was the score card.
I lost more balls than I care to admit, but when you lose most of them in the middle of the "fairway" (If you could even call it that) it's even more frustrating that putting them all in the water.
We saw a single landscape crew member pull onto the fairway in their cart just as we were walking onto the tee box and just sit about 200 yards off the tee in the middle of the "fairway". Despite us hollering, or waiting a significant number of minutes while other groups piled up behind us, they just sat there on their phone, completely unaware of anything else. I finally just hit my shot. Luckily I was nowhere near this person. But I guess the sound of a golf ball rippling through the air above them at 150mph+ was enough to wake this individual up as they quickly removed their cart from such a dangerous area.
I appreciate the new-ish carts, but why overcharge for a single rider? Do any other courses do this? But when both of the carts were sputtering and stalling all day, or having a hard time getting up the few hills on the course, maybe it's time to invest in a mechanic? Or a discount?
The one thing I don't understand is not seeing a marshall all day, a starter that didn't seem to know anything about the rules of the game or any rules unique to this course, or landscape crews with zero self-preservation. I guess I'm not really surprised the way the day went.
What I have to say to the owners:
I think it's great to have new owners take up these ventures instead of large corporations that care little for the people, and I'd love to support you, but maybe it's not the time to "shake up the golf industry" or do "away with tradition & norms" or look at the "course with a new lens... to create something unique". Especially not for something that is proven to have worked for the better part of the last 100 years. read more