I was excited to be able to join the GK crowd at Goat Hill Park celebrating GK’s 20th birthday. I haven’t been able to play much lately and have watched forlornly as GK Plays and Guru outings, and GM/... Continue »

I was excited to be able to join the GK crowd at Goat Hill Park celebrating GK’s 20th birthday. I haven’t been able to play much lately and have watched forlornly as GK Plays and Guru outings, and GM/GK Outings passed me by. It was great to see a lot of old faces again, and to meet some GKers I knew by post and review. And there’s always the need for a hug from Chris (Cpennbo), my literal lifesaver. With limited availability and both of us attending, kviser and I decided to have our GK Cup 19 final match during the outing.

This was my first time at the Goat, having only seen it from the freeway and read some of the reviews. Even after looking it over on Google Earth and seeing many of the comments, I was not prepared for the amount of slope within and between holes – the course is aptly named. Some holes have greens literally hanging on the side of a cliff – see hole 5, and hole 7, and to only a slightly lesser extent holes 6 and 13. The green on hole 17 is not on the edge of a cliff – it’s just a wave-as-you-pass-thru point between the high mound on the left and the cart path at the bottom of the swale.

One of the primary challenges at the Goat is accurately hitting your distances, so that you don’t come up short into one of the sloping swales that take your ball off to another zip code or into a penalty area or brush hazard. This course reminds me of some others in SoCal that are memorable in painful ways. As a mobility-challenged person, courses that have many steep slopes to be negotiated, just to reach some greens, fairways, and tees, are exhausting and treacherous, what I characterize as ‘extreme’ for my game and condition. I harken back to rounds at Champions Club at the Retreat and Hidden Valley GC. Wedged into inhospitable terrain, these courses beat you up while often presenting little or no place to safely play your ball. At some point, quirky becomes just stupid. At the Goat, I got to stupid around hole 6 or 7. Goat Hill Park is the reason I no longer play Hidden Valley.

It’s tough to rate conditions during the winter season, and take into account the ongoing drought in SoCal. Tees were generally fine – level and with adequate cover, except the tee on hole 2 had a lot of past/sanded damage (we played White). I was only in one trap, up against the revetted face on hole 1 greenside, escaping on the third try after try #2 bounced off the face back into the middle of the trap. Other bunkers looked like they had good quantities of sand, and some of the larger/deeper bunkers looked pretty scary. Fairway and rough turf were very spotty and could often be dirt or sand. Some lies in the mown rough between holes were better than that available in the adjacent fairway. Greens were the most consistent aspect of the course and were well-grassed, pretty firm, and mildly receptive. Many greens have significant slope and you need to know how to approach some pin positions. Downhill putts and chips down the slope across the green are treacherous.

Practice facilities at the Goat are fairly extensive, and we saw a lot of people using the practice areas that didn’t appear to have subsequent tee times. The range, while on mats, has spectator seating and some bays are equipped with Trackman-type electronics to view ball trajectories or play golf games. There are 3 putting greens – two are fairly small and flat, but the green on the east end of the practice area is very large and features a good deal of slope, and is much more representative of what you’ll find on the course. The shop is small and focused mainly on Linksoul apparel. An outdoor eating area and firepit seating area promote a relaxed atmosphere before and after the round.

The Goat is not a course that I will hurry back to, especially in current conditions. And it’s not a course I would look forward to playing in a stroke completion, where you MUST go find your ball and play it out. A casual round (or match play) is more amenable to a reload or forget it approach, so company and the course can be better enjoyed.

Recommended as an interesting play, subject to your patience quotient.