I did something stupid last week. I was browsing "Deal" times on TeeOff.com and spotted a great $43 rate on a Hidden Valley single for today. Hidden Valley rarely offers "Deal" times for singles, typi... Continue »

I did something stupid last week. I was browsing "Deal" times on TeeOff.com and spotted a great $43 rate on a Hidden Valley single for today. Hidden Valley rarely offers "Deal" times for singles, typically restricting them to 2-4 players. I hadn't played there for a long time, and I had $30 in GolfNow rewards expiring soon, so I quickly booked the time. Then as soon as I booked it, it hit me – "Oh no, I didn't check GK!"

Sure enough, they had just aerated a day or two earlier. D'oh! At least it would be about 10 days after the aeration. I considered canceling, but I wasn't sure if I'd get my rewards back, so I just rolled with it. (And ironically, I putted great with only 28 putts. Maybe I should start using GK to find recently aerated courses to play. ;-))

Anyway, onto today. Tee time was 12:30 but for some reason the starter had me down for 12:40. Paired with two nice singles and one guy's wife rode with him but didn't play. Beautiful day but sorta hazy. POP was decent at just a few minutes more than 4:30.

Conditions-wise, things are quite good other than the greens. Driving in, the course looked gorgeous. Fairways and rough are very green and lush, although once you get on top of things, there are some problem spots here and there. To the course's credit, they've done a good job of marking areas as GUR. The greens were slow and bumpy but like I said earlier, they didn't give me many problems. They still need a couple weeks before getting partway back to normal. (The greens on the course were thankfully much better than the practice green, where putts practically had rooster tails of sand flying up.) Many bunkers look all dried out but the one I was in was acceptable. Blue tee boxes were fine.

I hadn't played here since 2016 and I have no idea why I've waited so long. It's such a fun, exciting layout and almost every hole is beautiful and interesting. I can't recommend it right now but give the greens a couple more weeks to heal, and then it's highly recommended.

(FYI for ratings purposes, I gave the greens a 5.)