I have always enjoyed Shandin but haven’t been out there in some time largely because of the drive. Its only 45 minutes for me but most of my friends don’t like the drive out there so I went solo tod... Continue »

I have always enjoyed Shandin but haven’t been out there in some time largely because of the drive. Its only 45 minutes for me but most of my friends don’t like the drive out there so I went solo today and early on 6/24. Got there just before 6:00 am and noticed a twosome had already gone out. There was another twosome on the tee so the starter asked me to join them. I walked to the tee and said the starter asked me to join you and was about to introduce myself. At that point, the one guy went over to his partner to see if my joining them would be OK. He came back and said well, we’re really not very good; suggesting it would discourage me from playing with them. I said no worries that’s not why I play. So again he goes over to his partner to discuss and comes back says well, we’re in a hurry today and want to play fast and they took off. Kind of insulting really. Look, just say you don’t want to be joined without having to make up excuses. I usually enjoy walking on and meeting new people but in this case I was very glad they took off. So my choice was playing solo or joining the twosome behind me. I chose to walk solo. And by the way for as fast as they wanted to play, the twosome now ahead of me was very slow. I waited on them on just about every shot even though I was playing 2 or even 3 balls. All right enough of my BS and now to the course. The course clearly has been hit by the drought. Some of the portions of the fairways are very nice but the other half was hard pan. Playable but it was disappointing to see. The tee boxes were fairly thrashed and although that doesn’t really matter too much to me, it just takes away from the course a bit. Sand traps were a mix of hard pan and soft sand. Just needed to be lucky or unlucky as to which one you were in. The rough was thick and was difficult to find balls if they rolled into them. The greens were the best feature of this course. They were in great shape, were very soft and rolled true. They definitely give the greens sufficient water. One thing I forgot about this course was the freeway noise. Highway 215 runs right through the middle of this course and holes 2-5 are bit noisy. Customer service was not like it usually is. The starter was accommodating but the lady in the snack shack had a major attitude. Pretty unfriendly. Perhaps she should consider a different career! :-) Despite it all and as I mentioned earlier, I really like this course and hope one day it comes back to the condition it used to be. The layout is fun, is easy to walk and is challenging. I’ll definitely go back.