With tee times difficult to come by this past week, felt lucky even to get in a round at a decent time. With a 12:54 start at Whispering Lakes in Ontario, our threesome went off on time and played fro... Continue »

With tee times difficult to come by this past week, felt lucky even to get in a round at a decent time. With a 12:54 start at Whispering Lakes in Ontario, our threesome went off on time and played from the blue tees - one walker, and two in a cart that died a slow death only to be abandoned halfway down the fairway on 17. It was my first-ever visit to Whispering Lakes and I had low expectations based on past reviews, hearsay and of course that familiar view of the 4th hole from off the 60 freeway that I had passed by a thousand times in my life. I was curious but dubious it was going to be a great experience. At the end of 18, most of my concerns proved true, but there were some silver linings. The layout is pretty direct but very, very narrow with a lot of holes bordering some urban concrete boundaries that are intimidating to say the least. Under normal circumstances, this would not be all that horrible, but the current rough at Whispering Lakes is bordering on the ludicrous. It's very clear that it has not been touched since the shutdown so it's thick as hell, grabby and near impossible to find a ball that's even just 20 yards down the hole since you just took a full swing at the last one and it got caught up in all that junk. Again. So yeah, find the fairways or forget about it here right now. I'm sure it's not so bad at other times. The fairways are in okay shape and the greens, while not pristine looking or in perfect shape, actually run fairly quick. But the surface conditions are inconsistent from hole to hole, and some of them are quite tiny. A lot of the areas immediately around the greens though were in very nice shape. Bunkers? A nightmare. Very thin and hardpan for the most part. Tee boxes were okay, often quite narrow and sometimes not level, but predominantly okay. POP was actually quite good and surprising since the group in front of us seemed to not be in much of a hurry, but we finished in around 4:45 so that was quite okay on a beautiful Inland Empire day. Driving range was closed so that was a bummer, but putting area was nice. There were quite a few water features on the course, which shouldn't be surprising thanks to its name, but then again Woodley Lakes also shares that moniker and barely any of that water is ever in play. That's not the case here so you'll have to be aware. But right now, the absolute menace on this course is the rough so beware if you head that way.