Anthem shares its name of the huge housing tract with the same name, with maybe 1000? houses in this area around the course.

Fairway to green, I was pretty impressed with the level of well-maintain... Continue »

Anthem shares its name of the huge housing tract with the same name, with maybe 1000? houses in this area around the course.

Fairway to green, I was pretty impressed with the level of well-maintained green grass coverage with relatively little dead areas. The rough is quite long and penal if you're in there, grabbing long clubs so it's important to stay in the fairway. Bunkers were great and well maintained with the right amount of sand.

The layout did vary nicely between the holes, making for an interesting round. On a couple of the holes, you can see the Strip but most of the time it's the surrounding houses. It seemed like every 2-3 holes, there was a street crossing between houses to get to the next set of couple holes, in case that matters to people.

The staff/service was friendly and helpful. The carts don't have a GPS so one tip is to ask for the restroom code at the start of the round so you can access it around hole 7 and 13 instead of hoping a staff member is around to give you the code.

I would mostly recommend this course with one huge caveat. While the physical condition of the course is great and the staff/maintenance staff is top notch, I honestly didn't enjoy the round overly much because of the weather. Rant about the wind (around 25-35 mph constant, gusting to 55 mph). Club selection didn't matter at all with it being 4+ clubs (50 yards) at times. It was tough at times to even take a stance and especially on the elevated tee boxes, waiting a minute+ didn't help. Greens were pure so a ball at rest might suddenly get blown 10 feet a minute after stopping at rest. Medium length putts might move an extra 5-15 feet from just the wind and the flagstick was at a 30-45 degree angle at times.

Pace of play was pretty speedy. My guess is normal pace is a little above 4 hours since it's a very difficult course. I finished in a bit under 3.5 after playing through a couple groups and taking pictures everywhere. No one else was on the course by the back 9. The starter had a completely packed tee sheet (4somes at every available time slot), but he said when (not if) it gets windy, more than half the members will just no-call, no-show since they can just get a tee time the next day. From what I saw, maybe 80% of the people didn't show up.