I always find it tough to write a review on a golf course that kicked my ass! Seriously! I have been playing fairly well lately, and then I walked onto The Ranches in the West Valley of Salt Lake City... Continue »

I always find it tough to write a review on a golf course that kicked my ass! Seriously! I have been playing fairly well lately, and then I walked onto The Ranches in the West Valley of Salt Lake City. It's a very nice looking track. Very green from the recent spring and early summer rains we have had here in Northern Utah.

I am NOT an expert on turf grass, but I can tell you this... The rough was punishing and extremely hard to extricate myself from! It was like hitting out of a head of lettuce if the ball was sitting down. I don't know if the course was preparing for some sort of local tournament, but the rough was pretty long all the way around the course.

I don't like to use the word too often, but the fairways were immaculate! Perfectly green and lush and just a pleasure to hit the ball off of. Some, not all of the bunkers were a tragedy. A lot of the rocks and aggregate below the surface of the sand was not only peeking out, it was exposed in quite a few places. Took a good chunk out of the bottom of my sand wedge getting out of one of them on the back nine. Not cool!

Now let's talk about the greens. They were faster than Teflon on goose poop. OMG! There were so many putts that ended up 20 feet below the hole that I just barely got rolling from the top edge. Bordering on ridiculous. All of a sudden, three-putts were good scores! And I'm not joking! The clubhouse is nothing to write home about. It's sort of a glorified double wide trailer. The course is very targetey and the greens are very well guarded by bunkers and deep rough. Thank goodness there are a number of tee box selections so you can choose your poison. We played from the silver tees, which is the regular mens white tees at most other courses.

Will I go back? The price on a Sunday with my Utah Golf Association card including the cart was $28. Yes, I think I can suffer through another round at The Ranches! Two thumbs up!