Lake Geneva (Geneva National & Hawks View) review

Just got back from a Lake Geneva golf trip and I have a little review to offer:

Hawks View:

Maybe it's just me but I don't really get the love for this course that is all over this board. The price was right at $50 and the pace of play for a late morning tee time was great. The conditions were also solid, aside from hairy greens, but really for me that's where the good ends. Being built on an old ski hill I expected a little more in terms of views and elevation changes. Don't get me wrong there were some nice views but I expected more based on the chatter on this forum. The one thing I really disliked about the "old ski hill" was the driving range where you hit directly into the up slope of a hill. Nothing wrong with this place I was just underwhelmed by the relatively boring layout.

Geneva National (Palmer Course):

The facilities here are top notch. From the clubhouse to the halfway house, and the free range balls this is first rate experience. The price IMO is too high for the Palmer course. I think this is a $100 course, tops. After tax we paid $140 on a Friday morning. The course was in great shape and the greens were especially good. I thought the layout and the elevation changes were cool. I was not blown away, but I liked it enough. We had consistent 30 mph winds with even stronger gusts all day so that added another challenge. We flew through the front nine in about 1:45 as a threesome. We teed off at 10:45 so we were not expecting to fly around, but what we experienced on the back nine was brutal. The back nine took us over 3 hours. If I was not out of town I would have walked off without a doubt. At about the twelfth hole we finally saw our first and only ranger of the day. He told us that we had caught up to an outing. An outing on a Friday morning of a prime weekend (Father's Day) seems a little strange to me, but that's not what I take issue with. I take issue with the fact that no one in the proshop mentioned anything about an outing. I think that is something you should be told up front so you can make a decision on whether to plunk down $140 and 5 hours to wait 10 minutes on each shot. At the end of the round we went into the proshop to tell them what happened and we weren't even offered an apology. We were just told, "someone should have told you about the outing." That's it. IMO that's pretty crummy customer service.

Anyways regardless we had a fun trip. If I were going up there again I'd skip Hawk's View and probably play Abbey Springs, or Geneva National again. I would just check to make sure the Player Course was open and no outings are going off in front of you. ;)