Played a new course today

[mukster]

Played a new course out here in BC today:

 

http://pagodaridge.ca/

 

Thought I would give a short review and a few pictures.

 

This course is set in a really nice area on a great piece of real estate. It is a bit out of the way if you live downtown Vancouver, but it is easy to access by highway. I live closer, so the drive was not too bad. We were a foursome and had a tee time for 9AM. It is a brand new course, having opened up a month or so ago, so needless to say a lot of things are not completely up and running yet. The pro shop is situated in a pagoda type building (see pictures at end). The staff were friendly and I paid my $72 CAD after taxes. There is no putting green yet and warm up is one of those hitting cages, so we simply went straight to the first hole.

 

Starter got us off in time and the round took 4 1/2 hours. We could have gone around quicker, but the foursome in front of us seemed to run out of gas by the 10th or so, and the second 9 was definitely slower. Course is very pretty with some gorgeous scenery. I took a picture on every tee box, but used my iphone and the pics are not that great. The course is in good shape, but the fairways still need some growing in and the greens are obviously still very young. They were a lot slower than the ones I practiced on the day before (those were running at about a 10 stimp,) I think that these should hopefully be a lot better by next season. Markers for distance are not available yet, however, they did have thin painted stakes on the side of the fairways indicating 200, 150 and 100 yards in. I relied a lot on my laser yardage finder. I also have a S1 Garmin watch, but the course is not available for that yet.

 

The layout: We played off the white tees, as the gent who arranged the outing had played there before and felt more comfortable there. I found it slightly short from the whites and only used my driver twice. One of our foursome drives the ball long and straight or the most part and used his driver all the time. I am currently having direction issues so I hit 3 wood or hybrid off most tees. Two holes, no. 10 and no. 13 are drivable par 4s. Off the whites, I hit 8 and 7 iron respectively and then hit wedge into the green. They are pretty short, 221 and 232, almost too short even from the whites. From the blues this becomes 252 and 283, still worth a tonk. No. 10 is really dangerous as the hole almost juts over a canyon, so one has to be able to draw a ball to a green (for righties) and be great with distance. No. 13 is guarded by bunkers, but still worth the fun if your driver/3 wood/hybrid is working well that day. Par 3s off the whites were all less than 150 yards on the card, but 15 played 170 yards today, looks like we were on the blue tee box.

 

The rough was tough in a lot of places, with the ball really sitting down if you end up in it. There were a number of left and right doglegs, and moving further back on the tee boxes certainly increases the premium for straight driving.

 

Between the 10th and 11th hole there is a very long walk. They now have a guy in a cart that takes you this distance. I took an iphone video of this pretty drive, all of 3 minutes of real up and down terrain, but it is 76MB and I don't have any software to convert .mov files. I also flipped the iphone sideways while shooting it, so it all looks pretty crazy, will need to flip it upright once I find some freeware to do it with.

 

After the round, we stopped off at the clubhouse (currently tents) and had a drink and a really good jumbo dog and onions. Our overall consensus was; nice course, friendly and efficient staff, needs maturing, dunno if the money value is currently there,(lots of good courses around for similar $), may play it again next year once things mature a bit. All in all a good test of golf, will definitely play further back next time.

[Mr22putt]

Neat.....I'll have to try it...I was unaware of a new course.
Kinda surprised a new course has opened....I can't say any track in the Fraser Valley is making money.....a lot of discounting going on.

Is there Chinese ownership to this track?