Fake News said it would rain on Wednesday so waited until Friday to play my free round. The perfect weather and great conditions colluded to make for a perfect round and impeach many of my criticisms of this course.

Was happy to see they drained the swamp water hazards on the first hole and made it more friendly - now they should redesign the par 5 14th hole to make it more than a crap shoot. Still not a fan of the layout overall but removing all the tacky waterfalls and leaving just nature and places where they've built a retainer wall was an improvement.

Conditions were tremendous, tee boxes and fairways in perfect shape. Believe me folks when I say that the greens were very smooth and very fast and very hard to putt winningly when one of the many undulations were between you and the hole. Rough only slightly worse but the perfect height to keep a ball hit crooked from leaving the course. Some of the bunkers are fine but some need more sand - especially a couple of the hyuge ones I was in.

Service was bigly and I think many people would find playing here absolutely covfefe

Reviews are a lot about expectation. Hearing that the GK Cup was going to visit here made me expect great conditions. My memories of this place long ago were of great conditions - so I was expecting the same. Thinking of Eagle Glen as one of the better courses in this area also kept my expectations high.

How was it? Fine - I guess... Practice green lowered my expectations - furry and bumpy - the actual greens were a bit slow and not exactly smooth but they were better than the practice ones. Fairways are 70-80% good but you will probably get one or two unlovable lies. There is some standing water and muddy parts and some areas that should have grass but need some Rogaine. Rough could be one of 5 different grass types and any type of lie possible.

Once I get over my expectations and think about it - It's one of those mountain courses that strikes a good balance of holes and difficulty. Parts of it are pretty generous and that takes grass to do that - so in that case - I'll take some patchy areas. For the $40 I payed - totally worth it.

Played an SCGA outing here for $75. Couldn't get a sense if I would like this course but was thinking I wouldn't based on public opinion. This is definitely a golf gods course. There is a fine line between success and failure here and I could see two people play basically the same and have very different days. Luckily most of my bad shots ended up in a reasonable place and only one or two good shots didn't get the love I was expecting. So in the end I would say I liked the course quite a bit. The quirks of everything being squished together were outweighed by the beauty, the variety, and how well the course was maintained.

Right off, I noticed it was in mostly great shape - green grass everywhere and smooth fast greens that made downhill putting an adventure. Rough was the right height for stopping your ball and punishing you some but not too much that you hate the trade off. Which is good - because hitting the fairway here is often unlikely.

Our shotgun group probably started on the worst stretch of holes on the course - three holes nestled up against boundary fences with houses on the other side. One was a short par 3 so that helped the pucker factor a bit. After that I found most of the holes quite interesting and enjoyable. While often tight - I found the visuals off the tee interesting and when people in our group missed (which we did a lot) it wasn't like you couldn't find your ball - get it back in play and hope for bogey.

No driving range because - you know - space. Still - I recommend giving it a try.

Very difficult review for me to write - played in the GolfMoose Member for a day. Got paired with jmo1pro2 - meeting another GK'er always means a better time on the links and very much enjoyed my day with him and his friend. Wish I had noticed Sal was there as well but read his review for conditions.

Why a hard review to write? Nothing impressed me enough to mention here and nothing struck me as bad enough to complain about. Is the layout fun? I guess - I feel like the 3 or 4 of the holes we're designs recycled from earlier in the round. The use of water sometimes feels a bit cliche but nothing that bothered me. The only hole I could complain about the design might also be the most interesting so I'll hold my tongue there. It's got natural elevation changes - which I like but somehow it didn't seem to translate to more interesting holes. The whole course is a bit too house-y for my taste but it's pretty generous out there - so not really worrisome. The rough is penal and the trees wait for your ball to settle and then stretch out branches to block your next shot so while sometime it feels easy out there - once you are in the wrong place - you need to pick your next shot wisely.

Anyway - I feel very lucky to have only paid $50 to get to play it and it's completely worth that price. Maybe that's why they gouged me $5 for a Gatorade - to make up for it.

If Walking Dead needs to film an episode at a golf course - I have a suggestion of where to film it. Areas of this course look and feel like the course was abandoned long ago and are succumbing to mother nature (and zombies). All the traps are marked as "ground under repair" and I cannot guess what their future entails.

I'm not sure who this golf course is for. The rates, and conditions and slowness of the greens say "Hacker" - but the 200 plus par 3's to tiny greens with trouble all around, the ubiquitous OB, the tight drives with houses on one side say "Golfer".

The greens and chipping areas had more grass than I remember from 4 years ago - only a couple of holes seemed worse than I recalled - but still - I forgot how much I hate the layout overall. Way too many holes perched high on a shelf. Holes 7,8 look like the area is rented out as an off-road park a couple of days a week. Those 2 unforgiving 200 plus par 3's with tiny greens and surrounded by trouble.

You know what it takes to play this course well? Braaaaaaaains!!!

One of my favorite courses didn't disappoint. Everything was in good to better than good shape. You look around and see some brown around but it didn't come into play on our round. The greens and closely mown areas were especially smooth and allowed confident shots of many types on and around the greens.

While I would say the rough was inconsistent - I would counter by saying it was "smart rough" - mostly thin on the high side of the fairway so your ball had a tendency to make it's way back into the course and mostly thick in the places where you wanted the rough to stop your ball from traveling any further off line.

Pace of play was a bit slow, 4.5 but expected on a day where I heard a marshall say a popular day for hackers to show up and try golfing. The better player of the guys we were paired with was a 28 handicap I thought I heard him say. I thought: "They go that high????"

Played in a SCGA outing here on Monday. It was a cold windy day. As interlopers, we were relegated to the small section of matts on the driving range - which resulted in a back up to warm up. Overall, it's a nice layout (mostly shared tree lines with water in play on about a third of the holes) and clubhouse - nothing I can find fault with nor a place I will cherish. Perhaps this second part is why they are about to start a renovation.

Greens were, admittedly by a staffer, a touch faster than they would like but luckily not as fast as the putting green. Fairways looked half dead from a distance but were better close up and good to hit off of. Rough was deep enough that perhaps not hit that 5 iron out of if. Bunkers were all in great shape. I couldn't get a feel if this was as good as it gets here or if the pending renovation was allowing the edges to get rough. Some of the lakes had already been drained so beauty was lost in those places.

Played in an SCGA outing here for my second time in many years. I remember Valencia from the time the Los Angeles Open was played here (walking the course) and the time I played it a few years after. I remember being impressed with the course.

Valencia didn't disappoint - comparatively to the other private courses I've played as part of the SCGA - it's one of the cheapest and one of the best. A round here alone is worth the SCGA membership fee and the $85 they charged to play here on a Monday.

The fairways are pale green grass over a hardish ground and a well hit drive will roll out - surrounding them the rough is deep green and lush but easily playable. Greens are tricky, smooth and medium fast. Traps are nothing spectacular but I appreciated that they had the perfect amount of sand that lends itself to a decent bunker shot.

The layout is rolling, scenic and varied. Holes all have character and never felt overly punitive (maybe some parts of the greens where the ball will not stay) nor easy. The kind of course where par is difficult but a bogey feels reasonably easy for any hole. Can't wait to come back.

First time at Rams Hill and I'm realizing that I should listen to GK and ignore golf magazines on the great courses to play in California. I've never noticed Rams Hill get much love in articles on where to play but it's a darling of the GK world and now I know why. This place jumped into my top 5 by the end of the first hole.

Unlike flat ground forced into holes by pencil and bulldozers - this Fazio design uses the rolling hillside Rams Hill is built on to it's fullest. Forest green fairways and rough pop out against the the desert landscape. Bunkers are ringed in a hilighter pen of light green and brown grass.

The holes themselves are challenging, interesting and fair. Plenty of bowl shaped green complexes and friendly hillsides to keep a miss hit from traveling too far away. As a first timer - I never felt confused on the the tee box as to what the hole demanded. The couple of holes where my ball went out of sight over a ridge - there was never some secret punishment lurking - if anything it was in a better spot than I was expecting. There were no gimmicky holes - no forced lay-ups - no 3 wood or more par 3's - just great variety. Only on real property could you have and all downhill par 5 and Rams Hill has a pretty good one.

I guess my only complaint would be a hole or two have houses lining them. If it hadn't been for a fortunate ricochet off a tree - I'm pretty sure I'd owe someone a sliding glass door or perhaps my ball would have entered the open back door and taken and tour of the kitchen and invited itself over for dinner.

Like seeing a worn out and rusty 67 Mustang fastback on the road - you can be ok with what General Old is but know there was a day when this course was so much more and could be again with a renovation. I feel like General Old has good bones for a golf course.

The course has focused on tee to green and let basically everything else go. Perhaps winter is not the best time to get a first impression of a course. Tee boxes were mostly fine, fairways were an ok layer of surprisingly green grass over a very hard base - I could not believe how far drives travelled today - probably 20-40 yards over what I'm used to. Greens were in good shape - mostly smooth and medium fast winter speed.

Outside of the fairways is some rough - where it could find a way to grow - but mostly hardpan - so finding your ball could get interesting as the search zone was much wider than I'm used to. Some balls must have rolled an extra 50 yards rallycrossing it over the mounds of hardpan. Chipping also was difficult due to the thinness of the grass around the green.

I mostly liked the layout and could picture a much better course on this piece of land.

Played in a SCGA outing. Nice facility and people who work there. Conditions were US Open conditions for a 15 handicapper like me. Greens were the quickest I've ever played (but mostly flawless) rough was heavy and thick and green but something you could play a shot out of. Fairways were a layer of soft grass on hard ground - kinda like hitting off of a mat.

Where I was let down was in the design of the course. It felt like the architect designed carnival rides before taking on this place. Weather it was tree conservation, adhering to the terrain or attempts at novel design, some holes felt incredibly forced or unique in the worst possible way.

Adding the design to the conditions - its makes for an exhausting day.

Can a golf course be infected with Leprosy? If so I have a diagnosis for Victoria... As this course lurches and shambles into the future - I worry for it. Went there knowing I would need to move my ball around a bit after it stopped to play my next shot so I'm not going to dump on the fairways we all know are 30% dead and missing. Instead I'm going to tell you why not to bother here for other reasons.

There is a scourge of tumble weeds around the course that are growing. There is an obvious ground squirrel problem so some areas are holier than the Vatican. For whatever reason, there is a lot of hardpan nearby and leading up to the bunkers - so shots not hit down the middle seem to feed into dense tumbleweeds or the nearest bunker. Sadly, those bunkers are either very hard or muddy.

They have kept the staked areas with signs that say "Environmentally Sensitive Area" although it's obvious those areas have been murdered most foul. They should now read "Danger! Tumbleweed Farm beyond"

There is a marshall there picking up every piece of trash he can find but ignoring all the rocks littered around the course and bunkers. There are workers mowing the grass that is growing but nobody is adding grass or removing weeds. The greens are supposed to be the saving grace here and relationally - they are. But most are average muni and some are much worse.

All this for me reminds me that there is more to golf than just hitting a ball. It's spoiling a good walk and here there is no good walk to spoil.