For my second round of the day, I decided to stop by Whispering Lakes as it is one of few courses in the IE I haven't played yet. I was pleasantly surprised when I came into the parking lot that it di... Continue »

For my second round of the day, I decided to stop by Whispering Lakes as it is one of few courses in the IE I haven't played yet. I was pleasantly surprised when I came into the parking lot that it didn't look too crowded out there and the first tee was wide open. Good news is I got out immediately as a walk-on at 1pm. Bad news is by the time I got to the second hole I was already caught up to the log jam of players. I played with another single for most of the front as we were stuck behind a fivesome (and plenty of other groups in front of them). He gave up after 7 holes and I was able to jump past the fivesome at the turn to join a twosome that was still on the 10th tee. It didn't help much as we waited a good 5-10 minutes between most every shot. It seemed like the longest round ever, but my total round was 4:45. Bad but not horrible for a weekend round on this course, from what I hear. Otherwise, the course is exactly what I expected. Very boring layout. Very flat and wide open from tee to green. Small greens without any undulation or much slope at all. The course was in "average" muni shape for this time of year. Fairways and rough were basically the same (no real distinction). Patchy throughout. Very thin in some areas and some nice patches of green/lush grass in others. Tee boxes were a completely mixed bag. Some were bare sand/dirt and others were super nice and then everything in between. The one bunker I was in was decent, not great sand but better than I expected. The greens were actually pretty nice. They were a bit artificially green, sprayed with some kind of fertilizer or whatever to give them a little green sheen. They were very soft and spongy, which gave them a lot of nice bite on approaches and chips, but they were pretty doggone slow on putts. Though I doubt I'll ever play here again, Whispering Lakes does serve a purpose. It is a cheap course that's pretty easy to get on when everything else is booked. They don't pretend to be anything special, but you can expect a slow round like on most SoCal munis. Good course for beginners, but the length from the blue tees (over 6,600 yards) is still enough to make good players work. Kind of fun to swing as hard as you want with a driver on every tee because there's plenty of room for error on most holes!