Sfrei2002

Our 5pm tee time was available, inexpensive, and reserved by an eternal optimist. Chances were we wouldn’t complete the whole round in daylight, and technically that was true. But we played 17 with no problem and only had problems seeing on 18. So credit to everyone who enabled a 3:45 round on Sunday evening.

Greens are awesome! Many reviews paint them as impossible, but they hold shots well, are well-maintained by the staff, and really make your approach shots a key to scoring well. You want to be close.

Overall a great experience. Will we back!

The haze played tricks with our eyes all day b/c it obscured the backdrops, contours, and even the Mountains when we got to ‘The View’.

But the Mars-like backdrop just added to the dramatic views that this course is known for. A 100’ drop is one thing. Back that up with a reddish sky, the sun reduced to a small reddish dot in the noon sky, and my son and I throwing darts at pins all day, and you have the makings of a memorable round.

The greens were soft and accepting of shots, good ones and otherwise. The maintenance crew is doing an excellent job of repairing ball marks on greens, but players should self police better. (We played at 10:57, so to the group immediately in front of us I say this: Be a better community golfer! Replace your King Salmon-sized divots you left all over the fairways and tee-boxes! Stop slamming ur club head into the tee box turf after hitting shots into the woods. But thanks for all the brand new Bridgestones you hit into the roughs but didn’t bother to keep your eye on. We found a sleeve’s worth on the first 4 holes!)

Sorry to digress. Course and conditions great as always!!
None of it distracted my son from shooting a 78 and beating me again (by 6)
Enjoy

So I’ve probs played here now 6 or 7 times over the last 2 seasons and I find some new feature(s) on a hole or 2 each time. Some constant attractions are the obvious elevation changes - which makes club selection even more critical, the abundance of wildlife strolling everywhere you look, the lack of ppl on neighboring holes straying onto your fairway, or calling ‘fore’ after their wayward shot (haven’t heard that dreaded 4-letter word even once while here!)

Even without rain in August, the greens were green, the fairways were also green and well manicured. There were areas off the fairway that started to brown, but everywhere important was in excellent condition.

Make no mistake - it’s easy to put up a big # here. If the wind is a’ blowin- your score is a’ risin! But if you can divorce yourself from your driver or 3-wood and remember to hit a low 4 or 5 iron off the tee, you’ll find yourself in good position to make a lot of pars, or bogey at worst. And play those Par 3’s as if your Q-card depended on it. They are not terribly long or difficult, but they all have the same feature: a feature-less back drop. There are no trees or shrubs to help frame the fairway/approach, or the green itself - which makes it much harder for the eye to gushed range, depth, contours, etc. You are left relying on a # from a machine, and that’s not confidence-building when you’re relying on the “3’s” to save you from harm.

All in all another great round, another great experience, and as usual here, I found many more balls than I lost. ;))

Huge piece of land makes each hole it’s own eco-system.
Each elevated tee-box (and surrounding topography) nicer than the next.
No easy approaches to the green. No easy greens.
All greens and fairways designed and cut beautifully - Country Club quality!
Note To Management: Implore all your guests to repair any ball marks they come across. With the greens being so large, you may not find your own ball mark, but you’ll come across plenty of others, so just fix 1 or 2 of them.
Def coming back. My 2 sons and I played in less than 4 hrs. Our indexes are betwn 8 and 13.6, and found the course to be a great addition to our rotation. We’ll def be back.

First time here. Town soaked in American History dating to the Revolutionary War. Town still rural (a positive) with enormous swaths of land dedicated to public spaces, incl this Great Course. Enormous layout. Many significant altitude changes. Beautiful cart-path weaving down and through many types of terrain. Lombard St. in SanFran would be jealous of the hairpin turns used to slow ur descent onto one of its beautifully maintained fairways.
Oh yeah...the golf course:
Very well maintained. Special attention given to fairway and green complexes. Well-defined, well-shaped first and second cuts give the course great look and feel, and great playability, if you keep it on the short stuff. If you miss fairways, it’s going to be a long day with a lot of hill-trekking (even with a cart). Plenty of well-placed traps (acres of them) and dense surrounding woods make a stray tee shot ‘the walk of dread’.
Not to bury the lead, but I’ve left out the reason ppl come back: the elevated tee shots. Because of the ample space afforded the course, each hole is its own eco-system. You can’t see one from the other, which means when standing on your tee box, each hole’s features (canyon, valley, limestone, forest, ribbons of green stamped with shamrock-shaped traps) are laid before you to appreciate. Wind is always a factor with such course features, so your good mood may change if you misdirect your tee shot, and wind does what wind does.
The views are tremendous and the course well-maintained, and for that reason it will have me and my sons (9/12/15 handicaps respectively) coming back again this season.
Note to Management: Please implore all guests to Repair Ball Marks on greens. Give out a sheet on how to repair marks correctly. The greens are so well-designed and cut. A shame if it’s users were the ones to ruin them.
See you soon.
ScotchRockland