Worst courses you've ever played?

[StrokerAce]

Caught the latest video of Mr Shortgame on YT and it's a good one.
These courses are horrendous -- especially the last one. Had me cracking up!

 

I've played some holes like a few of them on here but not an entire course. 
Makes me wonder - do you recall any of the worse courses you played?

No need to call them out if you don't want to. Maybe just like "somewhere in western Idaho" or something like that.

[russtopherb]

I watched that one yesterday!

There's a course close to the MA/RI border that is very much like the ones in the video. You can't tell where the fairway ends and the rough begins, massive puddles even if it hasn't rained in weeks, burnt out patches on the greens... let's put it this way - there's a lot of online reviews that are basically some version of "well, at least the hot dogs are good". I played there once on a whim because it was cheap and I said I'd never go back again, no matter how badly I wanted to play. 

[StrokerAce]

1 minute ago, russtopherb said:

I watched that one yesterday!

There's a course close to the MA/RI border that is very much like the ones in the video. You can't tell where the fairway ends and the rough begins, massive puddles even if it hasn't rained in weeks, burnt out patches on the greens... let's put it this way - there's a lot of online reviews that are basically some version of "well, at least the hot dogs are good". I played there once on a whim because it was cheap and I said I'd never go back again, no matter how badly I wanted to play. 

pretty sure I've played there. I remember gravel in the fwy on one of the holes.

[russtopherb]

Just now, StrokerAce said:

pretty sure I've played there. I remember gravel in the fwy on one of the holes.

Yep probably the same place!!!  And if there wasn't gravel, there was goose poop. LOTS and LOTS of goose poop.

[revkev]

I hate to say it but nearly every Arnold Palmer design that I've played and I'm an Arnie lover.  A large part of this is the value of the course.  They are all top dollar, there is always at least one ridiculously hokie hole - you know a par 5 that needs to be played 5 iron, 5 iron, 3 iron or a par three that is so tight off the tee that it calls for a curved shot of some sort - Honestly I won't intentionally play one again unless I'm an invited guest at Bay Hill - even that course is a bit ridiculous - Bryson's par 5 on the front is way too hard for the normal player and 18 which is going to require a long club into a very small green is not what it looks like on TV - you are driving into a very steep hill so even from the white tees you are looking at around 200 into the green after a very good drive - and the green is a sliver - it's a lay up left and hope to get up and down.  And yes I know that it has a backstop but who here is capable of pulling a club that will fly straight 200 to 210 so that it rolls back down the bank to the hole?  Not many.  

 

Beyond that I've certainly played my share of cow pastures but they were priced accordingly and didn't pretend to be anything but what they were.  I can live with that.  there is a course in the Northern part of my count that's name escapes me - it's not a very good course and I've endured a 3 hour nine on it before - never again!  (That's why I've forgotten the name.)

[PrismFlopper]

1 hour ago, russtopherb said:

I watched that one yesterday!

There's a course close to the MA/RI border that is very much like the ones in the video. You can't tell where the fairway ends and the rough begins, massive puddles even if it hasn't rained in weeks, burnt out patches on the greens... let's put it this way - there's a lot of online reviews that are basically some version of "well, at least the hot dogs are good". I played there once on a whim because it was cheap and I said I'd never go back again, no matter how badly I wanted to play. 

I wonder how that must compare to Lakeville Country Club.

[russtopherb]

3 minutes ago, PrismFlopper said:

I wonder how that must compare to Lakeville Country Club.

I haven't been to Lakeville CC in YEARS, mostly because I've heard some stories about the conditions nowadays.

[PrismFlopper]

Lakeville Country Club. Let’s talk about this subject. If I pay 20$ and under and the course is an absolute dog track then hey what was I really expecting. If it’s cheap then I don’t won’t be offended that the course is terrible. this course charges nice CC prices for an abandon muni tracks.

BUT Lakeville Country Club…. How do I begin. They charge 75$ pp a round and then extra if you want carts. BUT the carts are horrendous and it’s always cart path only. Cart path is a mix between a motor cross track worthy bumps and the cobblestone roads of the North End. 
The COURSE omfg. Sorry for the language but you’ve got to be kidding me. Can’t tell the difference between the fairways and the greens. The beaches of Normandy has less craters than this place. Two separate holes have fairways separated by like 3 yards of “rough” which is more like brush, and the greens are separated by a “bunker”. I could keep going but I’ll stop there.

The club house…. More like old hunting lodge vibes. Your choice of well alcohol. 
The only nice quality of this course is I think it’s like the 16th hole is almost a TPC Sawgrass island green that was cool to play the day I played.

Im still to this day offended at the gall of the people at this course to charge this rate and quality of service.

[KC Golf]

I grew up playing a $25 muni with my Dad. It was in terrible condition, but we still had a lot of fun.  

There are lots of dog tracks everywhere, but they are usually priced accordingly.

The best fictional story about playing Dog Tracks is this book…. Missing Links by Rick Reilly.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74826.Missing_Links

My original copy came after a round at Grayhawk in Scottsdale where they gave you a book when you finished the course.  It’s hilarious.

[GolfSpy_APH]

Witches Ridge in Nova Scotia and not because it is really a bad course. It is and was cheap if it is even still running. The bugs were awful and the course itself was super bogged down with being wet. 

This was not mean to be a premium course or anything like that. Unfortunately there wasn't much of a layout and seemed more like a random course was plunked in the woods. 

Greens were uber slow and tee boxes were not great. Again it isn't meant to be great, it was down some random dirt road side track. 

I would like to try it again if it was still in business, but kinda doubt it is.

[kcchiefs]

hi guys new to forum but not so worst courses are as follows NONE ! Every course has its design problems, irrigation problems and of course greens. I think all golfers want to putt on decent greens and raked bunkers. That being said I played one course called Maplegate in mass! It didn’t meet any standard from above 

[Dead Solid Bogey]

Harkening back to yesteryear…. Played a course north of the Red river that was very strange in that the rough was better than the fairways, and the fairways better than the greens. To be fair the sand greens made for  excellent bunkers and traps.. 

[MattF]

Mohican Hills Golf Club.

What a s*** hole that place was. Crabgrass fairways, half burnt out greens, just a dump that apparently used to be a top notch course.

[SliceBoss]

When traveling to the general Orlando, Florida area… resist the temptation to play “Oaks National” in Kissimmee until they get their s*** together.  It’s a shame, because the overall layout is pretty cool with some unique holes that require course management.  Decent range and nice carts… other than that, the goats won’t even graze there anymore.  

[jamespolley00]

There's a course just east of Columbus, OH called Racoon International. It's build on an old Owen's Corning site. They are restricted from doing any digging due to what is buried underneath the ground. The clubhouse is an absolute dump. Bathrooms are terrible. You better just squat in the woods.... The course itself is actually a good layout, but the condition is typically dreadful. Saying all that, my buddies and I always have a blast because we know what to expect. 

[Duxman130]

18 hours ago, PrismFlopper said:

Lakeville Country Club. Let’s talk about this subject. If I pay 20$ and under and the course is an absolute dog track then hey what was I really expecting. If it’s cheap then I don’t won’t be offended that the course is terrible. this course charges nice CC prices for an abandon muni tracks.

BUT Lakeville Country Club…. How do I begin. They charge 75$ pp a round and then extra if you want carts. BUT the carts are horrendous and it’s always cart path only. Cart path is a mix between a motor cross track worthy bumps and the cobblestone roads of the North End. 
The COURSE omfg. Sorry for the language but you’ve got to be kidding me. Can’t tell the difference between the fairways and the greens. The beaches of Normandy has less craters than this place. Two separate holes have fairways separated by like 3 yards of “rough” which is more like brush, and the greens are separated by a “bunker”. I could keep going but I’ll stop there.

The club house…. More like old hunting lodge vibes. Your choice of well alcohol. 
The only nice quality of this course is I think it’s like the 16th hole is almost a TPC Sawgrass island green that was cool to play the day I played.

Im still to this day offended at the gall of the people at this course to charge this rate and quality of service.

Hard pass on the Lakeville Country Club - overpriced POS track. Ownership has no pride. Definitely a place to be avoided. 

[Jim N]

Victoria Park golf course in Carson, CA. You can't tell the fairways from ground under repair, as they are basically just hard-packed dirt and rocks. It was built on top of an old landfill, and they neglected to put any kind of sealer under anything but the greens, so all the grass gets killed by methane and other toxic stuff leaching to the surface.

These guys arrive at the course at about the 7:30 mark:

To be fair, the driving range is fine, as are the putting green and short game area.

It's probably the only course in the greater Los Angeles area where you can easily walk on to play any day of the week.

[dabigkahuna]

Bar none, it was a course played in the middle of the Fla Keys composed of sand, hard pan and shell rock.  I had fortunately forgotten to bring my own clubs on this trip, so they loaned me a really beat up set of mismatched irons and woods that should've been in a museum.  But here's the thing, I'd been under a lot of pressure at work, and my parents had rented a place at Faro Blanco on Marathon so my wife and I could kick back with them while our first born was on the way.   So, I figured I'd grab a few beers, get away for an hour or two and relax.  Despite the conditions, it turned out to be just the break I needed, and I felt refreshed despite handing them back a bent 9 iron when I finished.  This was more than 30 years ago, and I'll never forget it.  

[MH15]

The course that I can confidently say was one of the worst I have ever played was located near the south side of Chicago. 

You may have a preconceived notion of the Southside, but it actually is home to quite a few of the nicer courses in IL, such as the home of this year's BMW Championship- Olympia Fields. They also offer quite a few fun and fairly priced public courses that are enough of a challenge for a bogey golfer like myself. This isn't a bash on the Southside or their golf offerings, but just this one course which will remain unnamed. 

I quickly realized that this course was far from Olympia Fields (not in location, but in quality). 

I booked the round at about 9pm the night prior (a Saturday)- this course ALWAYS  has openings, so I thought I'd give it a go because getting tee times less than a week out at any (serviceable) course in Chicago is nearly impossible, much less 12 hours before. Plus, $22 for 18 holes; how bad could it actually be? About as bad as $1.22/hole golf sounds.

7:33 AM Tee time, I was the only one going out at that time as per my golf now reservation. Unfortunately, it had rained the night before, but I assumed I would be getting wet and dealing with it at any course I would've played. I rolled up about 10 minutes early to a parking lot and walkway that was nearly flooded and immediately noticed what might be the world's smallest "pro shop" if you could call it that - it looked more like a mini golf check in than anything, with the pull-down locking metal window as the only point of contact with the employees.

I rented a push cart, because regardless of what anybody says, that to me is 100x better than carrying your own bag, especially since it was 75 degrees with what felt like 90% humidity. After tax and the rental, it was pretty close to a solid $25 round. 

Upon getting there, the starter (who might have also been the groundskeeper, as he was sitting on a mower) told me I was good to go, so off I went. I probably played the worst first tee shot of my season, a snappy hook only about 75 yards into the left rough. That tee shot was indicative of the round as a whole, as I would come to find out. As the round went on, I came to find many par 3 tee boxes to be 100% mud, some other tee boxes all sand/seed, and whatever combination of the two you can imagine. Many nettings inhabited the fairways as they were "under renovation" or whatever verbiage they used to describe the clear lack of love given. I highly doubt there was going to be a real effort to renovate anything on that course any time soon.

The course was a swamp, about as close to literally a swamp as it comes. Absolutely 0 drainage at all. Puddles plagued the fairways, rough and even greens in some instances. Me, being the bogey golfer I am, found myself in quite a few of those rough puddles. That combination of wet, awful smelling water and humidity, with the added bonus of it being near a forest preserve with mosquitos made it the least enjoyable round of the season. I don't think I managed to take a single step anywhere on the course without seeing water rise around my golf shoes.

Needless to say, that round's scorecard was thrown IMMEDIATELY in the trash.

 

 

Lesson learned - there was a reason it had openings less than 12 hours before the tee time. At the end of the day, I never want to come off as a snob when it comes to golf; any golf is good golf to me. Two silver linings to this experience for me - I got to tell this story of the worst course I have played (to anyone who had the patience to read this far into the post) and I also got to run into another single on hole #3 who offered to pair up -he turned out to be a really nice guy, so the time went by quick as we chatted throughout the round.

 

 

[higherplane]

I played in a $150 entry fee tournament at what was once a nice course but in disrepair.   Ground under repair and no closer to the hole turned into multiple arguments with playing partner competitors, slowing the game down to a pace that increased the mosquitos.   On one hole the fairway was under construction and had dirt path down the middle, another hole had side hills that collapsed like small avalanches and if your ball landed on them you were afraid to walk up the hill and hit.  And that was just the front nine, on the back a thunderstorm with lightning came over, no horn, just hanging out in the carts for 2 hours fighting bugs.  After the storm standing water on the greens and fairways and a lot of mud.  One of my playing partners was such a know it all jerk, who shot a 9 on a early hole, then gave everyone including the foursome in front of us grief.  7 hours later was done.  Then ended up late for a dinner party with the wife, and in the dog house.   A few weeks later the tournament organizer resigned -no doubt after getting calls from participants.                                 

[MC3157]

When I was in the Navy I actually played what is, by their own admission, the worst golf club in the entire world!! Located on Ascension Island which is a small island below the equator in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean that belongs to the British. ONE BOAT GOLF CLUB.

The One Boat Golf Club is located in a part of the British Overseas Territory of Saint Helena on Ascension Island. This golf course is located on a volcanic island. The One Boat Golf Club is a par 67 golf course. Even the government in Saint Helena calls this the world’s worst golf course. The One Boat Golf Club does not have greens; instead, it has “browns or tans.” The browns/tans are made of crushed compacted lava rock and beach sand. Once the browns/tans are smoothed out, and in place, they flatten them and soak them with diesel oil so the sand doesn't blow away in the wind. There isn’t a speck of grass at all at the One Boat Golf Club. The only vegetation on the island leads up to the inactive volcano that is the middle of the island as you can see in the picture.

When I was there, they sometimes had pieces of artificial turf you could carry with you so when you found your ball, you put it on the piece of turf to hit off again. I played there a few times back in the 80s and 90s so I'm not sure if they still do that today. No one mans the clubhouse and you just put some money into a box outside of the door if you want to donate to the cause. Every hole was about half full of diesel fuel so when you finished you smelled like you had been working on fuel farm all day. Every time we knew were going to be doing duty there we would take old used beat up clubs with us and then just leave them at the club for others to use. It's definitely not a course that you would use your own clubs on as every shot, if you didn't have a square of turf, was hit off of rocks and sand.

So, I know I have actually played the Official World's Worst Golf Course. Believe me when I say, the British will play golf anywhere!!

 

 

 

Edited September 15, 2023 by MC3157

[Seve B]

Temeku Hills-Temecula

St Marks GC in San Marcos, CA

Eastlake GC-Chula Vista, CA

Riverwalk-San Diego

 

pretty much anything by Ted Robinson....

 

[PrismFlopper]

18 hours ago, kcchiefs said:

hi guys new to forum but not so worst courses are as follows NONE ! Every course has its design problems, irrigation problems and of course greens. I think all golfers want to putt on decent greens and raked bunkers. That being said I played one course called Maplegate in mass! It didn’t meet any standard from above 

Saw a rumor that this course will be closing at the end of the season.

[kcchiefs]

On 9/14/2023 at 6:58 PM, KC Golf said:

I grew up playing a $25 muni with my Dad. It was in terrible condition, but we still had a lot of fun.  

There are lots of dog tracks everywhere, but they are usually priced accordingly.

The best fictional story about playing Dog Tracks is this book…. Missing Links by Rick Reilly.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/74826.Missing_Links

My original copy came after a round at Grayhawk in Scottsdale where they gave you a book when you finished the course.  It’s hilarious.

I want to read that he’s a great writer