It took eleven long years but finally made the trek back out to Santa Clarita to try my luck at Sand Canyon (formerly Robinson Ranch) again, and boy did I need as much as I could get out there.

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It took eleven long years but finally made the trek back out to Santa Clarita to try my luck at Sand Canyon (formerly Robinson Ranch) again, and boy did I need as much as I could get out there.

This is not a course for the faint of heart. It's relentless and never lets you take a breath. There are elevations, crazy design angles and lines, desert chaparral mayhem around every corner, uncomfortable sightlines, and to top it off there are three nines offering all of this. My buddy and I played from the blue tees and did the Valley/Desert routing with a cart. It's a big challenge if you're not sharp off the tee or on approach.

Course conditions are far better than expected at this time of year and in that dusted out area of northern Los Angeles county. There is a lot of green in the fairways and rough, with the occasional dry spot but lots of danger areas between tee box and fairway to find trouble. A lot of the tee boxes were a bit slanted with the landscape, but they were in good shape. I only hit out of one bunker (greenside on hole 8 Valley) and it was very nice.

But the best part? The greens and the green complexes. Really fun, really nice rolls and a good mixture of massive and not-so-massive to really make you plan your approaches. Speeds weren't super fast at all but they were very consistent from hole to hole and simply a joy to play. Worth coming back just for the greens.

Driving range looks like a synthetic football field from the Pacific Northwest, but it gets the job done. Customer service folks were nice, as was the one cart girl we met up with on the front nine. Pace of play? Epic - we were done on a fairly quiet day out there in just under four hours. That was great.

Now that I've moved away from the South Bay and more up into the Los Angeles area, I finally realized that an afternoon tee time here with no traffic only takes about 40-45 minutes to get there, so I think that I will be not waiting another decade before I take on the super fun challenge of Sand Canyon again.