Grade: B+
Slope: 142(?!!!), 7200 yds, Price: $50 midday w/cart
This is the better half, of the Bryan Park 36-hole golf extravaganza. I won’t go into too much about it here., I’ve already talked about it in the Players’ Course video, there’s a fair amount of cross-discussion in this video also.
Suffice to say that this course was quite interesting in and of itself, most of the holes were interesting, the ones that were only modestly interesting were still nice. I did play the front full of anticipation for playing the back which is where the course runs along a lake, but to be fair the Par3 #4 is probably one of the most difficult holes on the entire course. The lakeside holes, which definitely brought a lot of water into *view*, did not actually bring a lot of water into *play* unless your idea of “into play” is basically “there’s water in sight”. With the exception of #4 & #16, the lake was never really much of a factor on any of the holes. As the eh, let’s not get into it here. It’s a nice course, decent views at a good price. The one thing that I forgot to mention in the video was that the greens were hard, much fast than the Players’ greens, well-sloped yet unfortunately a bit thin on the grass side, grainy & slightly bumpy. So challenging to putt because of the speed, “action” and the graininess. They were kind-of like buying a used German sedan with a rattle in the body somewhere. Overall the entire course had one real problem, the ground was very hard & the grass showed some real damage from play in some spots & from dryness in other spots. This goes as well for the Players course plus it’s not nearly as interesting. Which is surprising, because over the 5 weeks that I’ve been here, it’s rained at least every 3rd day. Often all day. Often at night.
So I couldn’t really rate the course highly because it had great grass. It did not have great grass, just “ok” grass. it definitely did not have great greens. Again only “ok” greens. The course itself is not really all *that* great, it is more like what I would expect out of a decent course. I definitely did not see it as all that tough, but I may have been jaded by the B- level greens & the fact that I’ve played too-many courses with water to really faze me. And then there were a few small planes & spots of greenskeeper-fouling.
Big plus: no houses on the course, no houses even visible during play. It’s really amazing that there is so much shoreline visible from this course & there are no houses in sight anywhere on that shoreline, at least as far as I could see. I would have expected that the far shoreline would have been riddled with houses. Still as always, be ready for some course interlopers to come sauntering past the “golfers only” sign and stroll down the cartpath next to your group while you’re trying to tee-off, with at least one of them jabbering at the top of their lungs in a foreign language as they refuse to keep quiet for golfers who paid to play the course & who are trying to play on a course that said interloper and their 8 friends & small children are not supposed to be on in the first place. Much less strolling around the course in a large group of interlopers while bouncing a beach-ball.
But hey this is America and we have freedoms and no one is more protective of their freedoms than recent immigrants from behind the former Iron Curtain.
Anyway, I’m glad that I played it, it certainly was a challenge and the people there were very nice and quite forgiving to let me walk on not once but twice. But let’s be realistic, here. It isn’t all that great of a course. It is a decent course. It may even be slope 142 from the blue tees. But the big thing that stands out to me is the fact that there are no houses on the course, and that is ruined by the fact that this still does not mean that some jackass and her family & several friends won’t wander onto the course during play from a neighborhood just down the lake. I realize that it is the nature of people to visit a park & especially to go to places they don’t live. But what the fuck do we have to have to keep non-payers from strolling onto a course during play? Guards & dogs?
But there is a big green quiet, safe open space near them & they’re white. So naturally they go there, with their dogs & kids and romp around like idiots, even through it is a crime for them to even be there. Then act like they are doing nothing wrong, not harming anyone, that the problem is anyone who would give them shit about being there. Because how dare that a paying patron give THEM shit about trespassing on a golf-course?
In my opinion there is a special place in hell for people who go to golf-courses & act like assholes. Especially when they don’t even pay to go there, they just live near the course or work on the course. The course exists for people to get the fuck away from people like them so of course they must go there & ruin the golf experience. 2nd course in 2 straight weeks in NC alone.
