Upper Course Peek-n-Peak, NY

[Stuka44]

Played this course this past weekend with a group, for the first time.  Visually it is one of the most stunning places I've played, very picturesque.  The course was also in very good shape, physically not burned out or anything etc. And the employees and ranger, and workers were all very nice.   However according to locals the course is under new management, and they are just booking whoever wants to play regardless of the number.  Our groups(12 people) Saturday afternoon (2 pm tee time) was halted 6 hours later at 8 pm because of darkness, with 3 holes left to play. 

Going back to an article I've reference here on Slow Play which brought me to this website, this course was a prime example of courses having no consideration for slow play, and simply wanting to take your $84.00 a round and not caring how long it will take you, or that as we experienced on Saturday that you won't even be able to finish your afternoon round in 6 hours.  The main reason it took this long is I'm pretty sure the U.S. Open is not at Winged Foot  this week its at Peek n Peak.  The rough was 5" long and very dense which consumed balls and required a time consuming search for virtually every ball that went into it even just 4 or 5 feet off the fairway.  The greens were rock hard and with very few exceptions, approach shots even that hit 6 feet from the pin would bounce and roll off to the fringe if you were lucky, or most of the time completely off the green into the rough.  Lets just say that for me in two stroke play rounds we played that in total  (9) 3 putts, (81) total puts, (2) 4 putt double bogeys later, that even though the course is visually stunning, I will not be returning to pay $84.00 a round for this "championship" experience anytime soon.

Our group played with triple bogey pick up limit.  Now imagine golfers who normally shoot 100+ putting these greens, and putting out strokes 8,9, and 10 on this course.  Hence  6 hours and not finishing our afternoon round.  So I put this out as a warning for those who don't like this much of a what I would call an unreasonable challenge for weekend golfers, but for those of you who say you like fast challenging greens, this is a place you may want to try.