Who else hates their home course ;-))))

[lumberman2462]

[quote name='SilverBullets' timestamp='1371823695' post='7296794']
[quote name='lumberman2462' timestamp='1371822990' post='7296698']
Sure you can belong to course you don't care for. In small towns all across this country there are Country Clubs that are the only options to play [i]and[/i] people will maintain their memberships out of loyalty to the club and their community. I keep a membership at the 9 hole club that I grew up playing even thought I don't live there. I'm not alone in that either. We have 15-20 non-resident members.

Long grass is a by product of superintendants & course management not wanting to take the chance of losing tees, greens and even fairways. I've seen that happen at multiple courses and clubs.

The economic troubles of the past half-decade have caused trimming of budgets across the board. It may not seem like much but when you have a course that only has 6-10 employees and you're forced to lay off 2 of them.....a lot of maintenance and grooming get passed over.
[/quote]

Almost universally unless its a high end club, I have seen fairway bunker maint. deteriorate over the past 5 years. Bunkers are the most expensive part of the course to maintain. They are also the smallest so it makes sense why it's the first place to cut the budget from.
[/quote]

It's hard to have any perspective of course maintenance budgets and economics until you've served on a Board of Directors. When I was a Junior in college I spent a summer back in my hometown and was "volunteered" to run the golf tournaments that summer: an Invitational, Club Championship, Club Matchplay, Ladies Invitaional, Ladies Club Championship and Couples Tournament. Traditionally the Tournament Director has a seat on the BOD and so I went to the meetings. It was educational.

Later ended up serving on the BOD of a pretty nice club while it was undergoing a partial renovation. That's when I really started to learn some things. It's unbelieveable how expensive bunkers are. Both to build and maintain.

One club I used to play occasionally had the bright idea to take out about half of the bunkers and convert to grass bunkers. 10 years goes by and a new crop of people are running the club and they decided to "[i]go back to the original[/i]" and had a big assessment and put the bunkers back in. It's now 10 years later and they're taking a bunch of them out again. The only decent move they've made was to convert from bent to Champions Bermuda greens.

[ruascott]

Ditto the comments regarding bunkers. Our course is always in fabulous condition, with the exception of bunkers. They have been rehabbing them, but seems a slow process.....and many of the fairway bunkers are worthless. Problem is there are 140 on the course, so maintenance I'm sure is a monster job.

[MarkFromTheUK]

Nope. Love mine. If I didn't I wouldn't pay to be a member.

[RickK]

I claim 2 facilities (3 courses) to be my home. I have a love/hate relationship with both facilities. One of them, has the old tiff dwarf bermuda greens that long ago needed replacing. This year, several of the greens are in horrible shape. They may well lose those greens. However, the rest of the course is in very very good shape. Other than the greens, my only problem is it kicks my butt. My handicap has steadily increased since I started playing there. Every fairway bunker is at perfect distance for my tee shot. Laying up short of them, leaves horribly long shots to the green.

The other facility, it falls into the category of what I have seen at way too many other clubs. I don't know if the people responsible for the course ever go out with the greenskeeper and take a look at what needs to be done. The maintenance has gotten shoddy. There are little things that could be done easily but never seem to get done. I think the pro of any golf course should go out with the guy in charge of maintenance at least once each week and see what is up with his golf course. If the pro needs to take management above him on that adventure, then he should press for them to go. At a club I belong to years ago, we had a greens committee. Every week, a member of the greens committee, the head pro, and the greenskeeper would ride the golf course and make note of issues so they could be taken care of before they got out of hand and costly to fix.

[Broiler]

[quote name='SilverBullets' timestamp='1369831505' post='7126694']
I love my home course because its relatively cheap to be a member at, its a great layout, the greens, tees and fairways are in great shape... but...

The bunkers are atrocious. They did not have a bunker rejuvenation program and it showed. Last year they redid all of the greenside bunkers and for maybe half a season they were in pretty solid shape. The only problem was, they filled them to minimum spec (4.5" deep) as opposed to going to the high end of 6". Now, the bunkers are already thin again. Worse yet, the fairway bunkers are not even playable. Literally I pull the ball out of the fairway bunker probably 65% of the time. Most of the bunkers have pretty much 0 sand in them and they are filled with rocks/pebbles. At the mercy of my forged AP2s I refuse to hit from the pebbles. If the ball is laying in a bunker that is not filled with mud or rocks, I will play it.
[/quote]
Yeah, the bunkers at Hickory Hills are the worst.

[Big Ben]

It's a shame to see once great courses aging terribly in the recent economic down turn, it's a bummer...BB

[idriveahonda]

[quote name='RickKimbrell' timestamp='1371833456' post='7298014']
I claim 2 facilities (3 courses) to be my home. I have a love/hate relationship with both facilities. One of them, has the old tiff dwarf bermuda greens that long ago needed replacing. This year, several of the greens are in horrible shape. They may well lose those greens. However, the rest of the course is in very very good shape. Other than the greens, my only problem is it kicks my butt. My handicap has steadily increased since I started playing there. Every fairway bunker is at perfect distance for my tee shot. Laying up short of them, leaves horribly long shots to the green.

The other facility, it falls into the category of what I have seen at way too many other clubs. I don't know if the people responsible for the course ever go out with the greenskeeper and take a look at what needs to be done. The maintenance has gotten shoddy. There are little things that could be done easily but never seem to get done. I think the pro of any golf course should go out with the guy in charge of maintenance at least once each week and see what is up with his golf course. If the pro needs to take management above him on that adventure, then he should press for them to go. At a club I belong to years ago, we had a greens committee. Every week, a member of the greens committee, the head pro, and the greenskeeper would ride the golf course and make note of issues so they could be taken care of before they got out of hand and costly to fix.
[/quote]

At CC you may have a pro that has time to do this.

At resort courses and most daily fee, there isn't enough time in the day.

[etakmit]

I have no home course. Nor one that I regularly play. Thats the benefit of having about 150 courses within 45 minutes of me (im exaggerating ... slightly). I pick a course that I haven't played before and go give it a shot. If it's not in reasonable shape I don't return.

There are a few that I like to play but I still dont end up at them more than a few times a year.

[golfdad907]

I'd start finding a new home course if doesn't get better

[Senna]

My home course is pretty much a joke, 10 holes are on or below the water line, so they are just a swamp after any rain fall (which we got loads of all year around), the remaining 8 holes are built on the side of a hill, so one hole you hit up the hill, next you hit down the hill, its just a tiring and boring layout to finish the round on. The tee boxes are a disgrace, they have very large tee boxes and re-shaping areas one at a time wouldn't disrupt play at all, but they rather spend money on stupid little decorative bridges and flower beds. Lastly there is a really bad attitude in the club, especially within the committees and ex committee members, its very hard to even put it into words, its just not an inviting atmosphere.

Because of these reasons, I moved to a different club this year, it takes me almost 40 minutes more to get there, but the difference is huge. The course is well looked after (with less staff than the above course), they work constantly to rectify any problems that may appear. They have even built a new hole, so the course can remain an 18 hole course but they could completely remodel an old hole and put it out of action for 6 months if need be. Lastly the atmosphere are the club is so much better, again hard to put into words, but just friendlier.

[ethanlculver]

My home course is pretty good. It is well maintained, but I will also mention the tee boxes like many others have. There are several that you can't find a flat lie on. I've hit some bad drives, even shanked and completely mishit some because I just couldn't feel comfortable on the tee box.

The fairways and greens are very nice.

But the other thing I must mention is the bunkers. They are filled with pieces of shale...some small, some large. They really scratch up your wedges. When we play matches and practice rounds there for high school, they let us remove the shale from around our ball.

Is this a common thing? I don't get to play many other courses besides my home one so I don't really know. Shale in bunkers that damage your clubs? I really wish they'd get rid of it...

[BrettB97]

I consider the college course to be my home course. Great condition. They just got a new Head Pro from another great local course this past January and has really stepped up the quality of the course all around. When I first started playing here the course was great but the greens were soft to the point of leaving divots on pitch shots. Now the entire course is looking pristine. All the work this spring is paying off for the grounds crew, hoping the summer isn't too rough on it.

Only two gripes is that it only plays 6000 from the tips. Great for a confidence boost but makes those 7000yd courses feel even longer. They also don't offer any memebership of any sort, therefore they don't offer any handicap service or tournaments of any kind. Can't complain though, $15 green fee for all day play and a pull cart during the week.