Course was in overall good shape. The tees were flat and firm. Fairways were about average on speed and planty lush, really no bare spots....but there was some over-watering, but only on a few holes...nothing to worry about. Greens were very very soft but speedy. Marshall said they are running about an 8.5 and i would have agreed with that. The only bunker i was in all day was wet...so i can't really comment about it.

I personally have 2 major gripes about the course.

2. TOO EXPENSIVE!!!!
I played for free thanks to my job and I would never pay more than about 60-70 dollars for the course ever. It's not worth it. The main reason for this gripe is no. 1.

1. Boring course!
Barring the greens, the course is really boring. No one hole really stands out among the rest. They all have rolling terrain, bunkers every where, and pine and palm trees. All the same...

Played the hawk on friday the 23rd. booked a 1:24p tee time with no trouble the night before. me and my friend have the same birthday and redhawk gives u a free round on ur birthday if u are a member of their email club. so we both showed up with the coupon and low and behold they wouldnt accept both of them in the same 4some. The employee who helped us out wouldve given it to us if the other older employee wasnt there, but he felt inclined to adhere to the rules given the presence of this all powerful coworker of his, who by the way was definitly not the nicest of human beings. Then we come to realize that there was a shotgun tournament going out on 12 holes starting at 1:00!!! this was the worst! im talking hacks from all corners of the world coming together on a beast of a course playing a scramble! if only they wouldve told us! we thought maybe it just skipped their mind by believe it or not, every group teeing off after the tourney didn't know about the tournament! what kind of a money hungry course is this! the conditions were impeccable, the pins were tucked, the greens fast, the fairways cut, the rough long, and the tee's perfect, but when u turn a challenging round into a 6 hour challenging round its just plain no fun! oh and btw the food sucks too....the only good thing is the beer prices! overall i love the course and will continue to come back and endure the 1.5 hour drive but seriously i hate bad customer service and this was the pinnacle of it!

Played 7/24. TIGHT!! You better hope that you can hit the ball straight on this course because if you miss the fairway you mind as well just kiss that ball goodbye. High thick grass and dense rough line each and every hole waiting for that slightly errant shot you are about to hit. But the customer service is excellent and the conditions were the best I've seen for July anywhere in the desert.

Played 7/24 at 10 am. Great course! One of the best conditioned courses I've ever seen in the desert in the middle of July. Very impressed overall with the greens mostly. They were some type of thick bladed grass that thrives in the heat and man were they good. The grain affected putts more but hey thats the nature of the game. The tee shots were generally pretty forgiving with some of the fairways being very wide (80-100 yards). There is very heavy bunkering on the course but nothing a little thinking can't avoid (I never was in one). Par 3's aren't too tough and the 5's are easy enough to score on. Overall fun and affordable course ($40 on golfnow).

Played the "Nick Tourney" Sat May 2. Great golf course. Having played the Stadium course right next door last summer, I had high hopes for the Nick course to be just as nice but probably not as much of a challenge. I got exactly what i asked for. The clubhouse is amaaaazing! absolutely gorgeous. Pro shop attendents, cart boys, starters...everyone was very kind and courteous. The course was amazing. As lush a green as I've ever seen. The tees were level and lush, fairways cut perfectly, there were actually 2 distinct cuts of rough and the greens were firm and fast, but fair. The real challenge here at the Nick Tourney are the green complexes. Your tee shots are normally quite forgiving. With hills rolling down both sides of the fairways, most slightly mi sh$t tee balls will bounce back down to a nice friendly lie. This is where the fun begins. About 2/3 of the course's greens are plateaus. Elevated greens with anywhere from a 5 to 25 foot drop off the sides down to either 4 inch rough or a very lush sand trap. In order to score here you must be able to take the ball in high and soft and be able to putt on some of the fastest greens you've ever seen. Enjoy your round here for it is one you certainly won't wanna forget.

So my regular 4 some played Redhawk Friday. It was cold and threatening rain all day but we decided to give it a shot anyways. When we pulled up a attendant was immediately at our car helping us get our bags together and then he shuttled us down to the pro shop complex. Customer service was excellent. The rates are a tad pricey but golfnow.com saved us with a 35% off rate of $45. Not to shabby if you ask me. The starter helped us out with some tips on the first tee on how to use their complex and amazing gps system. (even has a built in scorecard!) We played from the tournament tees and it was nice to see a course that actually put tee markers there rather that just leaving an empty tee box with a plaque in the ground. The course was amazing, but my god was it brutal. You must bring your A game to shoot well here. It's narrow, long, and very undulating. Almost every hole has an elevation change one way or another. The tee's were excellent. The fairways were a dormant bermuda so they were a tad dry but always produced a good lie. The traps were perfect. And best of all were the greens. They were absolutely perfect. 10/10. Probably my favorite part were the par 3's. 4 holes that were completely different from one another but held the course together. No. 4 is an uphill 165 yard par 3 that plays a good 20 yards further. The green has 4 tiers! Thats right 4!! You must be below the hole to shoot well. Then no. 8. an island green 155 yards. 2 traps on the island with water everywhere. No. 12 is another island green but this one is surrounded on all sides with a giant waste bunker. It also plays 155 yards. And then no. 17. Plays 210 yards from the tips. with a good 75 to 80 foot drop. From 210 i hit my 175 club and was on the back of the green. Absolutely incredible course. Definitely will return when the fairways aren't dormant and the course is in an even better than perfect shape.

I played Strawberry Farms with 3 buddies on Wednesday the 14th. Received an email from Roger Dunn's earlier in the week which provided a 50% off coupon for the course. I would not play the course otherwise. $110 dollars is really pricey for this course. But $55 is much much more reasonable. We teed off at 1215 and didn't have a single group in front of us all day. Encountered 2 2-some's behind us and we let them play through. The course was is excellent shape. All except for the fairways. During the winter they change there grass in the fairways to a very dry rye grass which is a very yellow/brown/green color. So from a distance the fairway looks very dried out. But when you are actually out there they are in good shape. Good and true lies everywhere. The greens were in excellent shape. Played in 4.5 hours taking our time. Overall great experience but definitely would only be back for that great rate of $55.

So I played the Champions course at East Valley for the first time on Dec. 2 at 7:20am. First things first; the course looked beautiful from the road coming in...I absolutely couldn't wait. When we pulled into the bag drop the attendant there wished us a happy "good morning" and greeted us with a smile. After confirming our tee time he took the bags onto the cart and showed us where to park and where the pro shop was inside the clubhouse. After paying a very reasonable $46.75 (golfnow.com discount) we were off. When we drove to the starter, who was very conveniently located right next to the range, he greeted us and checked the cart to make sure that it was stocked with sand, water for the club/ball washer, and of course our scorecard. We had about 15 minutes til tee time so we hit some balls on the all grass driving range. The putting facility was spectacular and the speed of the practice green was very similar to the course. But the chipping facility was unbelievable! Featuring 2 bunkers (1 designed after a bunker on the Champions course and 1 for the Legends course) and ample room around the difficult green to chip to. The turf was excellent with no bald patches to be seen. When it was time for us to tee off the starter came to us kindly to inform us. We drove over to the tee for what would be one of the most memorable rounds of my life.

Me and my buddy approached the tee with all the confidence of being able to play from the Tournament tees. Playing 7377 yards with a 76.1 rating and 139 it would be a formidable challenge for anyone, let alone two 20 year old kids. But we felt that we had the distance in our game to compensate, and hopefully the quality of game necessary to not only have fun playing from back there, but to shoot good scores as well.

The course was utterly beautiful. Playing from the back tees we were able to fully enjoy the beauty and difficulty of the course. Each tee was perfectly level and manicured just right. The fairways were also beautiful. They were however quite difficult. They weren't necessarily narrow in the landing areas, but they were very undulating indeed. A flat lie was pretty much a reward for either a perfectly placed drive or a lucky "members" bounce. There was only one cut of rough and that would best be described as thick. The rough easily covered my shoes and very easily hid balls from view. A couple times I found that a very good drive that just misses the fairway took an extra couple looks just to find in the rough. Hitting a shot out of this rough was a completely different story. I found that taking either a very strong and aggressive swing, or an extra club was the only solution to getting the ball to go the correct distance. The bunkers were quite different from the rest of the course. I found almost all of the fairway bunkers to have a very hard pack to them while the green side bunkers were a little less scarce, having a few spots with some soft sand in it. There is one characteristic that all 106 bunkers share in common though, and that is rocks. Whether it be small little pebble or rocks the size of golf balls, without fail every single bunker contained them. I found it a bit funny that on the back of the scorecard it even states "Stones in Bunkers - Deemed to be movable obstructions (Rule 24-1 Applies)." So what I came to is that the course has just came to terms with the fact that their bunkers contain rocks so they just rule them out of the equation. In my opinion this is the one thing that I believe they could put some time, effort, and money into. Whether it be dragging the bunkers with a fine rake to pull all of the rocks to the edge, or invest on replacing the bunkers with a new type of sand that doesn't contain rocks I believe that either would be a novel choice. Lastly comes the greens. The greens are the same as every other difficult course I've played; receptive to high shots, not so much to the low shots or chip shots, very fast, and lastly very undulating. What I mean by this description is that the greens will take and hold an approach shot of about more than 30 yards; especially wedge shots with a lot of spin. Playing a Pro V1 I actually was able to stick a 3 wood from 260 out. But with the chip shots it was a completely different story. The greens were very fast, and by very I mean absolute lightning. Any chip shot that didn't have adequate spin on it flew right past the hole. There was 2 separate occasions where on a normal course my chip shot would have held and stopped right by the hole, but instead it just steamed by going right off the green and even once into the bunker. I was shocked to see that my friend actually had eight 3-putts for the round (though he still managed to shoot a 84!). All in all though I would definitely go on the record to say that the greens were amazing.

Overall I would definitely recommend this course to anyone who loves the game of golf. The course features 6 sets of tees and is accommodating to players of all skill levels. From the back set of tees I actually shot an 87 which for a 8 handicapper I felt was very good. The facility is more than worth the price of admission, and well worth the drive out there.

The course also has a $5 replay rate lasting until the end of February '09, you can actually play the other course on the same day! And for only $5 more! Its a fantastic deal, but be forewarned, playing 36 holes in the same day is very tough. My day consisted of 6 hours rest, waking up at 4:30, driving 1.25 hours, teeing off 30 minutes after sunrise, then playing 36 holes of championship golf which totaled 14,900 yards, and actually finishing the 18th of the Legends course at 20 minutes til sunset. It was an absolutely grueling day, but one that I would definitely repeat as many times as my body, mind, and wallet allow. So to the East Valley Golf Club "Home of the Southern California PGA", I tip my cap, and thank you for providing me with a very challenging and memorable golfing experience.

Course was in alright shape. The greens were very slow and the tees had just been sanded. Played in 4 hours but teed off in the 3rd group of the day. Good fairways...unique design.