Smackatowa

Parts of the course are greatly improved. Pace is not one of those things. Having 3 groups waiting on the par 3's is just painful. We waited on every shot and every hole every time. The greens are hard and unreceptive. The ball just rolls to the back of the green regardless of where it lands. Some of the fairways are in good shape, but others not so much. Any of the fairways which are sloped will give you a bad bounce towards the hazards and there is mostly hard packed dirt all the way to the hazard so nothing will stop the ball from entering.

Played on a windy day which made the course more difficult. The fairways were full with only a few bare spots. The rough was dark green, thick and heavy. Depending on how your ball settle in would determine if you could get out easily or not. If it settle down getting a club on it was difficult. Conversely, if it stayed on top it was tee up for you and you'd get a flyer. The greens although smooth were hard to read as they did not always take the breaks. This makes putting difficult if you cannot tell if it would break or not even on a slope. We started just going straight at them and had more success.

The fairways and tee boxes have improved. There is still a lot of hardpan out there, but the fairways are improving. You will still get these weird hardpan bounces towards the hazards for no apparent reason and there is no transition from fairway to dirt. The fairway just stops randomly and hardpan dirt takes over. The greens are still hard as a rock and the ball will bounce off or roll to the back. The putting surface was pretty smooth, but very fast. There are a LOT of dead trees throughout the property. These along with the overgrown trees need to be cleaned up or removed. The cart paths have huge pot holes, There are ruts crisscrossing the fairways. It looks like maybe they were putting in drainage or irrigation but poorly filled in the trenches afterwards. Pace of play was slow, very slow at first. We were on track for a 5 hour round. After the turn it Yo-Yo'd for awhile but finally sped up a bit. We finished at a little over 4 1/2 hours. The was no ranger/marshal to keep pace.

The range ball dispenser rips you off. If you purchase a full bucket which is supposed to be 60 balls you get 40. The first batch it gives you is ~ 30 balls, the second batch is ~10. None of the other SCW courses do this. My friend brought his grandkids to ride in the cart while we played golf. I was walking so we had room for the grandkids. He expected to pay a riders fee. We have done this at other courses in the area and it was no problem. This course told him he had to pay FULL price for golf for both kids under 12 and the cart fee on top. When he asked why he was told it was a policy and that "someone" had complained. How does charging kids under 12 full price fix someone's complaint? They are not playing golf. Seems to me this course just rips you off as a policy. We will not be returning ever. Too many other courses that treat you fairly.

Another painfully slow round. Terrible greens and poor pin placements make for a lethargic day as you wait endlessly for the group ahead to 3 and 4 putt. No ranger to keep slow players moving. GPS randomly tells you to keep pace while you are staring at the group in front of you who is waiting on the group in front of them. We started a half hour late because they did not have enough carts. News flash*** If you kept the players pace moving at under 4 hours you would not have a cart problem. The grass on the greens are cut just above the hard packed dirt. This makes the putting surface very fast. Let the greens grow out a little. Give the ball something to hang on to. The pin placements were just ridiculous. Placing the pins on slopes where the ball cannot stop is just plain stupid. This course attracts too many amateur players for incredibly difficult pins. This just slows down play even more. Most of these pins would be considered an illegal pin placement. You need to have your superintendent review the rules for pin placement. He failed for most of them. All of the issues listed above are self inflicted wounds. All of them are easily remedied. This just shows overall poor management or a lack of caring about the golf experience and more about getting your money.

The greens on Mountain are getting rough. They showed a lot of foot traffic and unrepaired ball marks. Putts would not stay true. The fairways were in great shape. My only real issue is that my tee time got moved back 30 minutes about 15 minutes before I was to start which I did not appreciate. My back goes out if I cool down have to wait or practice too long. Having to wait 45 minutes after warming up did not help my back.

The course is in good shape. Fairways are a dark green. Nice. The rough is dormant grass. There are some dead/bare spots in the rough. If you don't like that then don't hit there. The greens are smooth but are hard packed. The ball bounces quite far when landing on the green. The apron is soft which stops all shots from running off. The pace of play which at times seemed slow as we bunched up at every par 3 with two groups waiting seemed to fix itself in between. We actually finished right about 4 hours which surprised us. We walked the course since the price does not include the cart and to rent a cart is an absurd amount (per person). The price without the cart is HIGHER than most other courses in the area with the cart included in the price. I think this is very deceptive of the SCW courses.

This is one of my favorite courses so my review might be a bit bias. We played Lake - Mountain. The fairways and greens were perfect on Lake. Mountain which is my favorite of the three 9's here had perfect fairways, but the greens were a bit bumpy. This is not the norm. Seems like it had a lot of foot traffic as you could see cleat marks all over the greens. Normally these are fairly smooth. Most putts still rolled smooth, but a few times it caused a rare miss. The pace was pretty good. Only had to wait a few times.

The course is overcrowded and slow. 5+ hour round. Painfully slow. Two and sometimes three groups on the tee waiting. Avoid this course at all costs. I would give this a negative rating if I could. We will not be back.

The course is in pretty good shape. The range is a bit chewed up, but usable. Carts are not included in the price. They are at an additional charge. (+16 per person) Nearly all greens are raised and the aprons are wet, so if the ball lands on the apron it stops but will bounce through if it lands on the green. The greens were a touch fast and firm. While the rough is dormant grass, the fairways did not have any (or very few) bare spots. The pace of play for us was excellent. Not sure that is the norm. We saw groups behind us (waaaay behind us) that were moving extremely slow. Luckily for us we were moved up in our tee time or we would have been behind these groups.

The course needs to fix the greens. Severe slopes and terrible pin placements make for a very slow and painful day. The grass on the greens is cut too close and then it is rolled smooth. It is like putting downhill on a linoleum floor. There is nothing to stop the ball. It just rolls off with the barest of touches. Let the greens grow out a little so the ball has something to hang on to. The slopes on the greens are just ridiculous. I'm sure they think that the greens is what makes the course more challenging. Sure, if I want to play goofy golf. The pace of play was awful. 5 hours to play is way too long. Having to wait 15 to 20 minutes per hole is not reasonable. This is what you get with poor greens and amateur players.

This course needs to fix the greens. Extremely thin grass on the putting surface. It is like putting on a linoleum floor. The ball just rolls off. Pin placements on slopes is just wrong. I’m sure they do this thinking it make the course more interesting and challenging. They would be wrong in that assumption. Nearly all of the greens are mounded like the top of a bald man’s head. Let the grass grow out a bit and thicken up the surface. There is also a lot of dead trees lining the course. Which is odd considering that the fairways are very wet. There are several trees which are in need of trimming. The course is decent, but it needs some work and stop with the gimmicky pin placements.

The price listed can be deceptive if you don't notice that is for walking only. An additional $16 per person for cart rental is too much. You are better off playing nicer courses for the price you would pay with the cart. The tee boxes and fairways are in good condition. The fairways are a bit thin, but it is green. It was very difficult to try to spin or flop a shot up as most lies were the equivalent to a tight lie. All of the greens are raised and the apron is always wet. Anything landing on the apron will not run up. They stop dead. The greens vary in speed from one to the next, none of them were consistent.

The course is in fairly good condition. Most of the fairways are filled in nicely with a few bare spots, but not terrible. The greens vary in condition and pace. Some are in good condition and roll smoothly others are a bit bare and are bumpy. The pace from one green to another varied also. Being that this is a Muni course with a large amount of golfers of varying skills and etiquette the course is surprisingly good shape. The carts which are beat up have GPS installed in them. Do not shut down your cart for any reason as the GPS reboots and it takes a long while to start up again. When the GPS is not on line the cart will not move forward. The guy who was teamed up with us found out the hard way.

Our tee time was after an "Outing" the course was having. We had no idea that this was scheduled before us. We had to wait for the carts to come in to get one. The carts came in after our tee time, but we did get out. The pace started off very slowly, then as we progressed it suddenly sped up. I guess the slower players finally finished the outing and got out of the way. The fairways are a bit clumpy in spots, but most areas did have grass. We did notice a lot of dead trees lining the course. There was an abundance of sand in the sand trap. It was like being on a beach it was so deep. If you landed directly in the sand you were rewarded with a buried lie. The greens however, were terrible. If you landed your shot on the green anywhere it ran all the way through. They were hard and fast. The greens need to be level out as they are sloped steeply, ridiculously so. If you are on the wrong side of the slope hitting a 3 inch putt will roll 12 feet. The greens are more suited to a goofy golf course then a real golf course. They charge $8 for a small bucket of balls for the range. Like their greens this seems a bit too steep. The range of course was chewed up as the outing most likely hacked it to pieces prior to us getting there.

My group hasn't play Union Hills in a while so we decided to give it a try. Big mistake. By the SECOND hole we were already backed up. Two groups waiting on the tee. From there on out we varied between two to three groups on the tee. Ranger did nothing to keep pace. He was only concerned about when we turned our carts in at the end of the day. It took us nearly 3 hours for the front 9. We did not get to finish our round as the sun set. I can see that the course is trying to make some improvements. They are taking out the old tennis courts. If you want to make some REAL improvements, then keep up the pace of play. This course is not that difficult. It should not take longer than 4 hours to play. We will not be back.

I normally give fairly positive reviews, but I just can't do that with this course. When we arrived we were told the course was 10 minutes behind. Not a good sign, but not terrible. One hour AFTER our tee time we finally got a cart. One group coming off the 18th who was 30-40 minutes behind the group in front of them gave everyone waiting for a cart an attitude about them being slow. Like it was our fault they played slow and ruined everyone else's day. One of their group ran around like he wanted to fight someone since the cart people drove back to find out why they still hadn't shown up after 30-40 minutes. Unbelievable. People like this need to be banned from all golf course. They even drove the cart out into the parking lot when there are signs clearly stating not to do this. On a positive note you can see that they are trying to make an effort to make the course better. They have updated the pro shop and the hitting bays at the range. I think they have updated the restaurant/bar too. They need to install a Marshall/Ranger to deal with the slow play and obnoxious people.
The on-course management is horrible. The greens were not very good. Nothing would putt true. The fairways were so/so. Some were pretty decent while other were extremely thin.
Because of the terrible course management and the clientele this place attracts I will never come here again.

The course is in great shape after coming out of reseeding. One of the 9's we played was cart path only. No big deal. The greens were a tad fuzzy, but will be fine in a week or so.

Overall the course is in good shape. The greens have been cut low and slice cut for aeration. This will heal in a few more days, but for today it did effect the putting. The greens were a bit fast and would not hold the line well. They will be fine in a few days, so no big deal. While playing I ran into a group in an orange nearly red cart who would drive up to the greens. They did not have a handicap flag on the cart, so they had no reason to do this. They also did not let me play through as a single when they played slow and terrible. Looked right at me and just went ahead anyway. If you know you are slow, there is no reason not to let someone who easily caught up to you to go through. Since they drove up to the greens I have to assume you do not have any golf etiquette anyway. It is very hot out and I did not want to wait on these people so I skipped a hole and went around them. There was no ranger on the course to report them to. (for driving up to the greens, not slow play) Guys like this need to be kicked off and not allowed back on. I don't care that you are a resident of the golf community. You are ruining the course for others.

Quite the musical day. It started with a group of 4 asking me to play ahead of them since I was a single instead of behind them. ♫ "Hallelujah!!!" ♫, then it transitioned into Bob Seger's ♪ "Against the Wind" ♪ and finally the ever popular ♪ "Everyone knows it's Windy" ♪. The course played interesting because of the wind. The course is in excellent shape. I had a great time thanks to the 4 guys who let me play ahead of them. Thank you and God bless you. I hope you had a great day. I did, in no small thanks to you.