Callaway Gardens course reviews 2020

[me05501]

We went on a couples long weekend to Callaway Gardens and the guys played both the Lake View and Mountain View courses. 

 

The two courses share a clubhouse and club drop. The Mountain View is a traditional out-and-back layout while Lake View's routing takes you quite a distance from the clubhouse and has a refreshment stop behind the 10th green. Both courses have lush Bermuda fairways and rough with well-bunkered Champion Bermuda greens. Conditions as of Oct 2020 were excellent, even on a very rainy weekend. 

 

We played Lake View on Saturday. This is a shorter, less-challenging course, very much what you'd expect to find at a resort. It seems like the front nine has at least five or six  330-335 yard par fours. The back nine layout is better and more scenic as the core middle set of holes plays around a large lake. This seems to be the course they recommend to large groups or less-experienced golfers. There are no marshals and seemingly anything goes. Sixsomes, loud music from carts, hollering across fairways...a very loose muni-inspired atmosphere seems to be expected. This may be exactly what you're looking for and if so you'll feel right at home. We are pretty casual but we did hop over a sixsome of guys who seemed to be having a big time. A pop-up storm with a tornado warning pushed us off the course after about 15 holes. 

 

The Mountain View course is a more serious test of golf, with more length, longer rough and some elevation changes. We played on Sunday morning after a rain storm had moved through so it was relatively deserted. This is the course where they hold state am qualifiers and similar serious golf events. We thought it was a great layout with a lot of variety. The fairways had puddles in many places and carts were restricted to the paths. We played lift/clean/place and enjoyed our round though the course played very long when wet even from the white tees. The back nine seemed to have noticeably smaller greens for some reason. I'm not sure of the history of these courses but perhaps they had 18 holes to start with and added nine on either end to get a total of 36? 

 

Our overall impression of Callaway Gardens as a resort was mixed. We didn't judge the property or the town too harshly since COVID-19 has no doubt put a kink in their plans for 2020. Most staff we met were gregarious and friendly. We stayed in a Villa that was essentially four separate bed/bathroom spaces that shared a common living room and small kitchen. With four couples on the trip we loved being able to easily hang together and watch football and eat, but the villa itself was dated and musty and there were several elements in need of repair. Maybe the Lodge is nicer. All that said we got three days/two nights with two rounds of golf for $420/couple which is an attractive rate. I have no idea how much a round of golf costs for a walk-up guest but I'd estimate $65-75 for the shorter course and $100-110 for the championship course.