West Palm Beach Golf Course Review

Course Review and Comments

Played today with much anticpation about the new design of West Palm Beach Golf Course. The basic design and hole routing is fairly decent. The course plays longer than the 7000 yards posted from the back tees making it a very stern test of golf. The green complexes are nice and the condition of the greens were good although they could have been a bit faster. The fairways and tees overall were in good condition, but the fact that carts can basically only ride in the fairway has nmade them hard and quite worn in some areas.

When they redesigned the course last year (Mark McCumber should be shot), they basically removed all the rough areas and replaced them with sand, ala the Great White Course at Doral. So basically the course is all fairway and waste areas. The problem and my only beef with the course is that the waste areas are filled with soft beach type sand instead of a firm coquina sand that is usually used in waste areas. There are weeds growing out of it everywhere and forget about finding your ball most times you hit into it. I had four drives plug in the sand and several others that were unfindable and probably plugged, only slightly off the fairway. Unlike most courses with these extensive waste areas forget about driving a cart on them. You will get stuck. Makes searching for balls like hiking through quicksand. Extremely unenjoyable.

Bottom line I was shocked about what they did to the course. Not the theory of the design, I like that, but the waste areas have basically made the course one big unplayable lie. There are a multitude of low cost public courses in Palm Beach County that I would play instead of this one.