Tuesday 04/09/2018 played the Gary Player Signature Course at the Westin Mission Hills, on an Underpar.com special. Two players, cart, range balls, and replay for $79. The offer was valid April 4th th... Continue »

Tuesday 04/09/2018 played the Gary Player Signature Course at the Westin Mission Hills, on an Underpar.com special. Two players, cart, range balls, and replay for $79. The offer was valid April 4th through September 28th of this year. Booking my tee time by phone was really easy and pleasant.
Drove out from Mission Viejo, to join my friend who is staying in Rancho Mirage for the month. Not knowing traffic, left at 3:40 am and arrived at 5:30 am for a 7:26 tee time. [note that T-Mobile/Metro PCS had little or no signal, impacting navigation] The pro-shop doesn’t officially open until 6:30 but the cart barn, range, pro-shop and snack bar staff were all in by 5:45, and at sunrise there were pyramids of Callaway range balls on the pitching, putting areas and driving range. The staff was wonderfully warm and welcoming.
The practice greens are excellent and are very good representation of the greens found throughout the course. Rough around the practice was deep and chipping is allowed. There are two chipping greens, and a really great practice bunker. Driving range is all grass.
The club house at the Gary Player course is very basic, and I have seen nicer at local muni courses. The facilities are clean, effective, and in good repair, just nowhere near as impressive as the club house at the Pete Dye designed sister course.
The starter moves groups along, makes sure those on the range or practice green know how long they have before they are expected on the tee.

Carts are basic Troon Golf, clean, well maintained, with an ice chest that was filled with ice along with a pair of cups for use of the water stations, score card, course book, and pin locations with distance on. The course showed up on by GPS, and flag pins had prisms to aid laser rangefinders. The Carts are wired and have a mounting location for large screen GPS, but none of the carts have a GPS installed.
We were paired with a very nice older father and son (50’s & 70’s) from New England who were in the area for vacation. They were playing Silver so we played silver. The course plays 6,044 yards from the silver tee’s. From the blacks the course plays 7,062 yards.
At my distance off the tee the course appeared wide open, however Mr. Player makes extensive use of fairway pot bunkers and bunkers that run more than 100 yards down strategic sides of the fairway. Greens are as likely to be surrounded by grass pot bunkers as the traditional sand bunkers. Many times the bunkers are hidden by the swales, that make up the fairway. Balls that land where Mr. Player intended will find lush flat fairways most of the time. Too much left, right, long or short, and you will find a bunker, or uneven lie.

The condition of the course is excellent from level lush tee boxes to greens. The course is surrounded by homes, truly beautiful homes, many with creative yards, and pools. The use of the water and landscaping of ponds is exquisite, the sound of the many waterfalls either on course or in the backyards of the homes brings a rich texture to the on-course experience. During time of the season when temperature isn’t so warm, this could be a course worth signing up for a slow round.
Tee boxes are lush level, with minor divot damage, a little more on par threes as would be expected. Most tees have trash cans, and ball washers, a number have water coolers. Black, Gold, Silver and Jade tees all had significant separation even on par 3’s. The first par 3 is hole number 4 and Blacks are 200 yards, and Silvers are 126 yards. The golds are 160. The challenge of the course, the hazards, landing areas vary greatly between Gold and Silver tees much less black.
Fairways are rich, level in anticipated landing zones, and severely unlevel anywhere else. Uniformly the fairways were green and deep, rough is mostly lush but in winter colors.
Bunkers are thin. This isn’t a lack of sand or poor maintenance as I was led to believe before playing the course based on some well know golf website reviews. This is not the case, well the wind laid down for us today, with no more than six knots I was told it can be very strong this time of year. Simply putt the bunkers are more like what you would find in El Paso rather than the full fluffy bunkers we might see at more costal venues. These bunkers require Lee Trevino type of bunker shot.

Water hazards abound, the extent of which are often concealed by the landscape and undulating fairways. On 18 the banks were shaved to allow a ball played to the left side of the fairway to turn that way and get wet.
Rough, is two to three inches deep, uniformly good around the greens, at time s dormant and laid down beyond the fringes of the fairway.
Greens. Most greens were pristine with a molted mix of grasses weaving a pretty tapestry. All eighteen greens rolled true for both speed [exactly like the practice green] The majority of the greens play a straight putt with only the slight break. There are several that are multi-tiered or angular running front to back or left to right, none beyond the skill level of the average golfer. We did encounter a unusual number of ball marks on the green which is a shame for a course of this caliber, that there are players not up the level of the course.
Starting at 7:26 the temperature was comfortable low 70’s, by the time we were making the turn, we were into the 90’s. The round took right at four hours. We interacted with the marshal several times, we were running about 10 minutes ahead of schedule at the turn, but it was nice to see real marshalling going on. At 8 he had checked in with us, verify our group, checked our start time and where we should be and told us we were good. We also saw the beverage cart once on the front nine and three or four times on the back nine. Unfortunately, they do not carry non-alcoholic beer.

The Underpar.com certificate was good for the round for two, with cart, and range balls, plus replay at either the Pete Dye course or the Gary Player. I am glad I played the Gary Player and would play it again in a heartbeat, but I look forward to playing the Pete Dye in the future. I felt the course and service were far and away worth the $40 per person fore the round and more. This is a truly enjoyable, and beautiful course.