Southwest Golf -Observations and Summary 2

15 courses in 16 days from Phoenix to Las Vegas to Southern California.  It was a great trip and consisted of many outstanding courses.  In addition to a lot of golf, we worked in a visit and dinner with friends Bill and Pearl Thorn who recently moved to Phoenix, four shows while in Vegas, a day well spent with our grandson, Dr. Andrew Allen in San Diego, and finished it off with a few meals and two rounds of golf with Ohio friends, Daryl and Kathy Steiner, at La Quinta.  I am not sure how we could have packed any more into this trip.  Despite flying to Phoenix, we still drove 1,975 miles before we boarded the airplane for our return trip home.

With respect to the Top 100 courses that we played, I have some difficulty placing them into a specific order as you may know from some of my previous posts.  I do not even like to rank them with a number such as a 7 out of 10.  What I prefer to do is to place them into one of four categories:

Loved the Course – Would play it often if given the opportunity     Shadow Creek, Cascata, Maderas, We-Ko-Pa Sagauro, Coyote Springs

Liked the Course – Would not hesitate to play it again   Torrey Pines South, La Quinta Mountain, Rio Secco, Quintero, Pelican Hill South

Liked the Course with Some Reservations – Would play it once or twice a year Wolf Creek, PGA West Stadium

Did Not Like the Course – Would not play it again    Pelican Hill North (Too difficult to be fun), Sandpiper (Poor conditioning and a rather mundane course design), Trump  National LA (Too difficult to be fun)                                                    

Summary of Golf:

Mike’s Average Slope Rating 132           Highest Slope Rating 139 (Coyote Springs)

Marilyn’s Average Slope Rating 128       Highest Slope Rating 135 (Trump National LA)

Average Yardage Played     Mike 6,231 Yards      Marilyn 5,153 Yards

Mike’s Average Score   82.3    Highest Score  89 (Trump National LA)   Lowest Score  78 (Rio Secco and Maderas)

Marilyn’s Average Score  88.6  Highest Score  96 (PGA West Stadium)  Lowest Score  83 (Maderas)

We played 2 courses in the Phoenix area (Fort McDowell and Peroria), 5 in the Las Vegas area (Las Vegas, Henderson, Boulder City, Coyote Springs and Mesquite) and 8 in Southern California (Santa Barbara, Ranch Palo Verdes, Newport Beach – 2, Poway, La Jolla and La Quinta – 2)

9 Courses are in the current Golf Digest Top 100 Public and 6 are courses that were previously on the Golf Digest Top 100 Public Rankings.

Seven rounds were in a desert setting, two in the mountains, five on the Pacific Ocean and one (Shadow Creek) that was in the desert but it is lush, green, tree-lined and no desert in sight.

Our 17 nights were spent in 12 different hotels.

The worst traffic was Los Angeles (by far) and Las Vegas.  Traffic in Phoenix and San Diego was better than expected.  We drove many, many miles across deserts.

Highest Green Fee – Shadow Creek $500 (Ridiculous, but I guess it was worth it for a one time experience)

Lowest Green Fee – La Quinta Mountain $99 (Start of their off season.)

Best Value for the Green Fee – Maderas $130, PGA West Stadium $139 and La Quinta Mountain $99

Our favorite city was San Diego.

Our favorite place to return for a vacation would be La Quinta (Palm Springs area).

Our favorite golf experiences were Maderas, Cascata and Shadow Creek.

Once again we were blessed with outstanding weather (two days that were cloudy and low 60’s were the worst).  I do not want to jinx us on our final 17 courses, but we have played 176 courses on this quest and have yet to be rained out.  (I know, I should not have mentioned this.)

The next trip will be in late June and we will be playing two courses in the Chicago area and three in Wisconsin that are on the lists. (4 Current and one previously ranked course)  We also will be playing two new courses in Wisconsin, Sand Valley and Mammoth Dunes.  I am fairly sure that they will be included on the next ranking that will come out in early 2019.