Turkey Creek Golf Club - $$
1525 State Highway 193 • Lincoln, CA 95648 • (916) 434-9100
Map/Satellite Image · Driving Directions
1525 State Highway 193 • Lincoln, CA 95648 • (916) 434-9100
Map/Satellite Image · Driving Directions
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 Surveyor Report: 4/27/2006 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Considering today’s troubling trend of upscale-ish golf courses being built as a means to sell overpriced McMansions, Turkey Creek Golf Club is an excellent and appealing exception. Cut into the oaks of the Sierra foothills and strewn with Hummer-sized granite boulders, this is a golf course without a house in sight. Turkey Creek was designed by local architect Brad Bell, who has also laid out other courses in the area, notably Teal Bend and Empire Ranch. His use of the site’s old granite quarry and boulders throughout the course adds interest, challenge and beauty without projecting a contrived feeling of “Hey, look how cool we are… we have boulders and a quarry!” The course opens with a little loop of three holes out and back from the clubhouse. Hole number one is the least interesting of any on the course, but it makes for a good way to get your round off to a solid start. The false front of the number two green makes you think you need more club to get up the hill to the pin, which will leave your knees knocking as you putt back down the hill towards the edge. If you roll it a little too hard, you’ll be pitching your comebacker from 30 yards back down the hill. The third hole is a fun par 3 over the lake that fills the old quarry near the clubhouse. Other front nine highlights include the granite outcropping marking the dogleg on the three-shotter fourth, the inviting heart-shaped green of the par 3 eighth, and the beautiful ninth hole, with it’s sweeping left to right dogleg. The back nine is where Turkey Creek really picks up the pace. The water is out of sight, but reachable on the tenth. The green on the long roller coaster twelfth is tucked down in the trees. The signature fourteenth has a pond to fly, a rock wall to carry and a narrow diagonal green to contend with. Split the traps on the fifteenth to leave a short shot down into the hollow where the green is hidden. Hit it straight and long out of the slot on sixteen and go for the green in two. Climb up the hill on seventeen, and get ready to hit a couple well-placed shots on eighteen—cut off as much as you dare from the tee, but there’s water short and long. Then hit the green that’s perched up above the quarry lake with a well struck mid-iron and you’re home free. The back nine is laid out so that you rarely see another fairway, so much so that if it weren’t for the excellent color GPS video screens in the carts, you’d wonder if a search party could find you in the woods. Turkey Creek has a friendly staff, a well-stocked pro shop (who doesn’t need another hat?) a good snack bar with plenty of room inside and out on the patio to hang with the gang after the round, and a nice grass driving range where you can go to figure out why you put so many balls in the water on eighteen. On the beautiful spring day I played Turkey Creek, the conditions were remarkably good but not as good as they will be in a few weeks. Though still recovering from the endless rain of this last winter, the course handled the overabundance of water with relative ease. Only a couple fairways had unmown mushy sections roped off, and the greens were generally long with slow to inconsistent speed. A few of the greens on the back nine, under the trees, had thinner grass and rolled a little quicker. I expect that all the greens will be up to speed soon. The fairways were lush, as you’d expect after the rain, but amazingly rolled out far more than I would have expected after all the wet weather. The rough was long enough that I worried about my lie and whether I could get out safely, but not so long that I wondered if I was leading the U.S. Open on Sunday afternoon. The sand was still a little damp and heavy, but not overly difficult and easily playable. The tees were a little thin and sandy—perhaps still coming back from a punch and sand job—but nothing that would affect playability. The round took about five hours on a Thursday afternoon, but that was understandable considering the recent rainy weather, the perfect day and the number of people that showed up. Turkey Creek is a course you should play if you have the chance. The old-school layout through the trees will make you think without ruining the fun, the surroundings are unspoiled and beautiful, and the overall experience is well worth the green fee. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||
