I am not going to rate this visit as it was a day after the rain, and this place (especially the holes that play near the mountain slopes) is usually hit hard. So just so you know, it is particularly marshy in spots, especially 1-7, as well as 11 and 16. With more rain forecast expect the hilly parts of the course to remain this way for a while.

That said, easy enough to drop out of casual water and find a clean spot, and the greens were pretty firm all things considered.

Tougher than average resort course. Open off the tee, some bunkering on the dog-legs, moderate (and deep!) bunkering around the greens. Greens are on the smaller side with distinct portions. Miss your spots and 3-putts come into play. Tough up and downs if you short side yourself. Second time playing here and that's what sticks in my mind. Also, great views playing back towards Mt. San Jacinto. The teeth in this course comes in the form of longer par-threes and the depth of the bunkers/complexity of the greens.

Conditions-wise, generally immaculate with green, green grass throughout. Tees were perhaps a bit shaggy but flat as pancakes. Fairways: all carpet lies with minimal divot damage. Rough: juicy and healthy and tough to find ball until you were on top of it. Sand: perfect, white stuff with plenty of coverage. Greens were a tad slow for my taste but bobble-free. All in all great quality and fun challenges for the 82 bucks I paid. And course was empty which I always appreciate, from a selfish standpoint.

Played Ridgeline/Creekside. Overall, I'd say things here are pretty good - but there a few qualifications I would add too. Ridgeline and Creekside the greens are generally in very good shape. Ridgeline were lightning quick while Creek they were somewhat more medium to medium fast. And while both were very soft (so 2 approaches plug) they were smooth and carpet like with minimal poorly repaired or unrepaired ball marks.

The iffier parts were the tees which were very raggedy in parts on the Creek 9. The signs of drought are showing up in parts of the fairways too, although the dead, yellow spots are interspersed with over-watered and marshy areas. So some parts could use more water/others less. Go figure. Overall, the fairways were more patchy and had several gur areas on Ridgeline.

I played it on an under-par deal for 65 - I think it's certainly worth that but I wouldn't pay rack.

Anyone want to play with me? I seem to have a streak going of playing on empty courses during prime time - not sure what I am doing (and I'm certainly not complaining).

Debell was pleasantly nice in the heat. Fairways generally lush, some rough to speak of, greens look very nice with a nice cut (a few bobbles but it's muni golf) and the traps were fine.

Biggest thing I saw was #2, 3, and 12 were all resodded which is welcome as the first two really take a beating with all the iron play they see. Needs to bed in, but it will be nice in a month or so.

My broad-brush impression is that summer-time conditions have set in here. Played ridge/canyon 9's for 70 bucks. I'd say that is about the top dollar I'd want to play. Aside from the fairways and rough which I would describe as semi-lush but with a fair amount of dry spots and some GUR here and there, the main issue was with the greens. They appeared to have been aerated some time in the last 2-3 weeks and still had a thin top dressing visible. They putted better than they looked with visible aeration marks and lots of mower-burn bare spots especially around the fringes. Adding to my suspicion is the fact that about 80% of pins were within a couple of steps of the edge of the putting surfaces, likely as they tried to keep traffic off the majority of the greens, leading to one or two rather un-gettable pins...

Further, they had the spongiest feel I have ever experienced, like mattress memory-foam (If I recall......ahem). That said they were fairly smooth although medium speed at best.

Played Sunday. Agree with most previous reviews. A few points of emphasis:

Course is lush, but perhaps over-watered! A fair amount of marshy areas early on in the day.
This may be because all the fairways were recently slit-cut. Doesn't really affect play but it is quite obvious to the eye.
Also, there were about a half dozen fringes which had medium amounts of re-sodded areas. Generally not in highly used parts of the surrounds, such as on the sides of more serious mounding.
Sand is the usual for here - half the traps I was in were thin mud with little base below. The others were reasonable with a deeper covering.
Greens were pretty nappy and slow. Bobbles here and there. Pretty typical for here.

I would give a solid 8 overall.

Played super-twilight for 45 @ 4pm. Hands-down the best deal around. I moseyed around in about 3 hours taking my time and only waiting once or twice - or, to put it another way, very easy to get in 18 before dark.

Course is in good shape but looks a little more like late summer conditions, reflecting the warmer weather of last week. Tees lush with a few slightly crowned around the edges - 9/10. Fairways are mainly lush with plenty of pad under the ball. There are some dry spots and burnt areas here and there, but plenty of roll and mostly great lies 8.5 or 9/10. Rough is really juicy - 3 inches on average and 4 or more in spots. The ball really can sit down in it making it hard to find your ball in broad daylight - I picked up a few balls given up as lost in the primary cut. 9.5/10. Sand was good in the one trap I entered - 10.

Greens: I played Creekside/Ridge and was a little concerned on hole 1 of Creek as it had a bit of fungus, and signs of some emergency remedy here and there. The hole was cut away from this problem, but if you had a long putt through it then it was especially bumpy. After that, all the surfaces were fine and consistent with thicker coverage, soft and nappy. I suspect they let them grow shaggy during 90 plus temps last week and they are still that way. They did not have much in the way of pace either 8.5/10.

I would give it a solid 9/10 overall. I think it is one of the most varied, visually appealing courses around. For less than 50 bucks it can't be beat.

So I heard from one of the cart girls that there is new management in place here. Old GM gone. From her point of view, she and her colleagues are more 'conservatively' adorned, so if that is what brings you here then I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

That said, people take over golf courses for one of two reasons - either to drive them into the dirt and redevelop the land as something else; or, to run the place better! The latter option appears to be the case. There is plenty of cosmetic/superficial evidence of a new sheriff being in town: there are new cart direction signs all over the place; the old 'black-gold-white-jade' tee order has been replaced with a more standard 'black-blue-white-red' config; and you can now drive on the first fairway! Gone, I suppose was the old excuse of "we keep it cart-path only so the wedding shots taken from the practice green have the lush background of the first fairway to them". Now your nuptials will include my tire tracks.

Then, there is also some evidence of maintenance trying to improve conditions. The fairways have been verticut recently to de-thatch them - this is welcome as the turf here is hard as rocks and thin growth-wise, so this should help promote some lushness if they add water (not sure about that part! It's dry and thin right now). Also, there are lots of gurs marked and apparently being worked on to recondition them. That said, the result is lots of bald spots - especially in the rough. It seems the old plan of growing in the rough to narrow down the fairways has bitten the dust along with cart girl tanks.

That said, course is generally playing thin and fast. It's hard as rocks throughout. It's great downwind/hill as it goes forever, but the greens will not hold unless you can fizz it in there with some spin. They are both fast but bobbly. Lots of unrepaired ball-marks and some numb-nuts walking around everywhere in the strangest, circuitous paths wearing what appeared to be soccer cleats. Tees are lush but you don't spend much time there. All the sand needs reconditioned as it is crusty, gravel-filled and usually thin with hard-packed material below the surface.

Good luck to the new owners. Let's hope they turn on the spigot. Let it flow.

No rating as this is to update you on how the course fared in the recent rains (and, they will be starting spring aeration soon anyway). If you play here then you know it can be vulnerable to rain given the terrain the course plays through.

Overall, I think they did ok as no cart paths or anything else was washed out. There was a lot of mud on the paths and some small rivers of mud flow from the surrounding mountains onto the fairways - especially on the front nine - but the crews were out with heavy equipment clearing things off early Sunday morning so good for them. Biggest issue is the bunkering. I would estimate they will have to re-do most of them as they were either washed out or turned to mud. Expensive, but they say they have a plan to re-condition them.

Got the chance to play here for the first time in a tourney Monday. Overall, things were pretty immaculate as you might imagine. If I was splitting hairs I would say there was the (very) occasional bare spot in the fairways or on a tee box that didn't get much light, but that would be a very picky review if I did. Overall, everything was very lush and green. Sand was pro-quality, containing the nice, white marble-ized stuff.

Absolute highlight were the greens which were maybe the best I have ever played in Socal. They had barely a blade of grass out of place and ran true and extremely quick! Yet they were receptive to a well-struck and well-directed approach. Takes a while to adjust to the quality of surfaces like these but when you do you scare the hole quite a bit.

And that brings me to my main point about courses like this. Sure, it's a privilege to play them, but I think they illustrate how much quality conditions (or their lack) influence play. The fairways here run fast even though they are green so you get good position and distance off the tee on well-struck shots. I easily got 20 yards more on my good ones. Then, if you do get into trouble, the sand and rough around the greens is very conducive to recovery shots if you have decent short game smarts. (I remember reading a newspaper article where a reporter took Steve Marino out to his local muni to see if he would totally destroy it, but he could (only!) muster a 68. When asked why he explained that he could never go real low because although the course was short and easy for him, it negated his short game (aka scoring) advantage because he couldn't control the spin off the marginal fairways, couldn't predict the outcome splashing out of the sand or chipping around the fringes, and couldn't putt aggressively with the slow and uneven green speeds. Oh, and he couldn't figure out why the groundskeeper kept mowing while he was in his back swing.)

Although I don't have the budget to prove this theory, point is that I think great conditioning rewards decent technique. Oh well.

On a final note, course is a traditional style layout. Although it is heavily tree-lined, I found it to be fairly generous off the tee, and not overly long at all with many shorter holes. Most of the defense came in the form of large, highly undulated and well-bunkered greens. If you didn't land in the right section multi-putts became highly likely. Front nine has more variety and uniqueness than the back, which plays more back and forth across the same, flat terrain. I would get bored playing 10-18 a lot. But if you get the chance - go! And enjoy putting the way it's supposed to be!

Played Sunday. Surprisingly, the fairways appear to be coming out of dormancy, likely because of the warmer weather. The result is the course is framed for the eye a bit differently as the dormant rough now borders each hole more clearly - and, they've been allowing it to encroach making for visually narrower targets for the eye. That said the fairways are still a bit thin and compacted in spots.

Clearing of native areas appears to have continued too. If you haven't been here recently it will likely look quite a bit different.

Tees and sand both good. Greens were firm but inconsistent on the speed and with quite a few bobbles. Pace was the usual slow front nine opening up somewhat on the back.

FYI while it was super windy in the rest of the IE Sunday, Eagle tends to get sheltered from Santa Ana's so if you are looking for somewhere to escape the wind then keep this in mind.

Had 11 bogeys in a row playing here Sunday 1-11 which is a first and a feat I'd rather not continue with. Onto the review:

The good: the greens are superb and are the best I have seen theme in long time. Firm, fast they will hold a well- spun shot. They are so true you just have to get it on line and it will roll, roll, roll. Collars and fringes around the greens and the tee boxes are all good too with fine grass coverage.

Now for the bad: the fairways are the worst I have seen them. You could ( inaccurately) say they were dormant. But the actual fairway grass (which I think is rye) is still green. Those are the patches you will see out there. The rest of the brown stuff is basically a weed that has been encroaching over the years and is now almost completely dominant. Visually it looks terrible and doesn't play much better as it is ultra thin, hard and compacted. Sand is the usual rustic thin mud.