Ledges Golf Club #9

So last week when Wife was down for her Birthday we decided to play as much golf as our pocket book could handle. I’ve been meaning to head up to the Ledges Golf Club for a while now but haven’t really had the excuse until now (especially since my place of employment exclusively books all our golf packages with them…did I get a discount? Noooooo….they’re too uppity for that and no my opinion of the course wouldn’t change had the round been free).

There were a couple of problems with this however.

1: we picked a day that the wind was blowing from the North at like Mach 3.

2: the front 9 is laid out so that when the wind is blowing from the North you will either have your flesh removed from your bones due to the sand blast effect from the surrounding sand dunes, or more likely your ball with travel at least half the distance it normally does but then make a complete u turn and hit you in the head.

3: the course REALLY isn’t worth the price.

4: the course is clearly laid out to facilitate a land rape of multi-million dollar homes and not for the sheer design of the course as you’d find in the great courses across the world.

Wife thinks I’m being a little harsh here, but with so many course choices in and around St. George you would think that the club would have made a better use of land and topography when laying out the front 9 in order to give the course something to stand out with.

They have deemed the front 9 as a competition grade narrow course blah blah blah…what this really translated into was that the fairways were so jammed together that while standing on the Tee you wondered if you were going to slice and hit the guys on the opposing Tee coming right back at you. I have seriously played city courses that weren’t as jammed together as this front 9. Holes 1, 2 & 9 all within a poor shot and a law suit of each other. Holes 3, 4, & 5 are the exact same. Holes 7 & 8? Yup you guessed it exactly as the others. The other shame is that every one of these holes was strait as an arrow…in order to make up for this the design team clearly decided to make each green a fun house putt putt challenge with rolls, dips and troughs the like that I have only seen at the amusement park.

The back 9 seems like a complete after thought when it is compared to the front 9…or is it the other way around? Either way the back 9 had a large number of redeeming values. The fairways had some challenge to them and followed the topography of the surroundings and were far more than a bull dozed piece of land unlike the front 9. The HUGE draw back to the back 9? This is where the utter and complete rape of land is evident. Rather than continue with the theme of the course in following the lay of the land, AND the spectacular views of Snow Canyon State Park, they decided their real money lay in setting aside those areas for the multi-million dollar homes. Plain and simple it’s sad. Rather than allow the course to become one of the greats out there they took the lessor road and routed the course away from the views and topography so that half a dozen of rich bastards could rape the land.

So as I said above…the course is not worth the $110 prime rate nor the $60 twilight rate that I paid. The staff in the club house was arrogant and demeaning and the service was sub par. The only redeeming staff presence was the range director that gave me the lay of the land before teeing off on #1 and the bag girl who was genuinely interested in how our game was on the way back to the car.

So for those average Joe’s out there that have to work for their money my suggestion is not to waste your time or your cash. Take it to one of the other local courses and play 3 rounds instead…you’ll be glad that you did.