Third time playing Tierra Rejada since moving to TOaks a year ago. Rode the blues as a mid afternoon single.

I REALLY want to like this course, it is 8 minutes away, but after giving it several c... Continue »

Third time playing Tierra Rejada since moving to TOaks a year ago. Rode the blues as a mid afternoon single.

I REALLY want to like this course, it is 8 minutes away, but after giving it several chances I now feel I can write a fair review and say this really is not a very good golf course. It feels like a long miniature golf course, missing only the clown’s mouth. Nice staff, nice grill, good practice facilities on grass with a bunker and separate chipping area and expansive practice green. Bunkers are really good, great sand. 13 and 14 are two of the prettiest holes you ever will see, I believe the stream on the left side of 13 is new and it is beautiful. I give the groundscrew credit, the drainage issues alone must be a nightmare, but the place is in pretty good condition overall under what I am sure are challenging conditions. But none of these positives, even taken together, makes up for the serious deficiencies of the course overall.

First, I first played the course when the pandemic was new and supposedly you could not take a cart. So I walked it. This course is not walkable. At all. I honestly can’t believe they let anyone try. Turns out you just had to ask and they would give you a cart. But the point is that this course is on the side of a high hill with constant severe elevation changes that make for several silly holes with several hundred feet of drop between tee and fairway. One such hole on a layout is fun, several make it gimmicky. And some severe uphill holes create blind shots into the green. For example, 10 is a long uphill par 4 with a totally unnecessary false front on the raised green you already can’t see. All of this also contributes to slow pace of play, though today wasn’t bad at all. But I want to play at a place that I could walk if need be some languid late afternoon. Not happening here.

Second, four of the first five holes have blind shots. 1 is a long par five with a hidden pond on the high ground by the green, invisible until you have already hit your third shot unless you hit two career opening shots. 2 is a tight par three you can see, but the next several holes all have blind shots. Even if familiar with the course, you have to walk or ride ahead to try to aim your second shot if not the tee shot. Like the very severe elevation changes, a blind shot or two in 18 holes is okay, but this is borderline ridiculous and occurs later on the course as well. It might be more manageable if the carts had GPS, but they don’t, which is really kind of hard to believe these days generally, but is ridiculous on this course.

Next, there are several holes, especially on the back 9, where the tee shot feels like you are hitting directly into the adjacent hole’s golfers coming toward you. It feels like the course once had fewer holes and they squeezed a few more in to make 18. That said, there a couple wide open tee shots and then several very narrow ones. 18 is a par five that feels like it was just shoved in against the hillside, and doglegs both ways; 17 is a 100 yard very downhill par 3 that also feels like it was shoved in to make 18.

The card shows a combo set of tees, but blues are almost 6600 and the combo drops down to 6100. The place really needs something in between those two lengths, they could easily fix that with a different tee selection on the combo set of tees.

The course feels contrived, and is difficult mostly because of design flaws, IMHO. I don’t t mind difficult if my good shots are mostly rewarded, but here good shots often are u reasonably penalized. 9 is a long par five with a false front AND a HUGE ridge in the center of the green, neither needed to defend the hole, and both unreasonably penalize a good third shot—hard os one thing but a course should not rely on luck. Some quirky courses have a charm that grows on you over time, but I can’t see this happening here. There are too many good courses in this area to spend one’s time here. The staff deserves an A for effort, but this design is just untenable.