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Lone
Tree Golf Course- Antioch
First off I’ll
let you in on a little fetish of mine: I love lines on a fairway.
You know, those mowed patterns you see that make the fairway stand
out from the rest of the golf course. I just love ‘em. There’s nothing
prettier than the sight of your drive bouncing in the middle of
a patch of well-manicured grass. Whenever I’m on a course like that,
I feel like I’m playing a real high-priced track.
Now, Lone Tree
is anything but high-priced. Antioch residents can walk for $15
during the week, and the top walking fee, for non-residents on a
weekend, is still just $25. But this course has lines. It’s not
the best maintained course I’ve ever played, but it is the best-maintained
course I’ve ever played for less than 20 bucks. The April day I
was out there it had just rained pretty hard the day before, yet
the course was still in very good shape.
Matter of fact
I blew my first putt about 15 feet past the hole because I was thinking
the greens just had to be slow after all that rain.
There’s a catch,
though. One of the reasons the course is in such good shape is they
don’t allow carts off the paths. And they’re serious about this.
One of the guys in my group yanked his drive to the opposite side
of the fairway as the path, so he figured he’d just whip across
once and no one would notice. Wrong. Like a state trooper busting
out from behind a billboard to hit you with a speeding ticket, a
marshal instantly zipped up to this guy and gave him a ticket. Gave
him a ticket! The marshal took his name, made him sign a form and
said if they caught him once more, he was gone.
The reason
for all this, I was told, is that the course is built on particularly
soft ground, so carts on the fairway would be more damaging than
on a typical course. If you bring a note from your doctor, though,
they’ll give you a special blue flag that allows you to go 90 degrees
to your ball. No joke.
Or you could
just walk. The front nine is relatively flat, with a few elevated
greens or tees. But the back is a roller coaster ride. In fact,
after a while the holes sort of all blended together. The only way
to tell one from another was where the humps were. No. 10 has an
elevated tee and elevated green. Nos. 12, 13, 16 and 17 also start
and finish high, with added humps in the middle. And No. 15 just
has one hill in the middle.
You don’t want
to be behind that hill, by the way, which is where you’ll be if
you tee shot goes right. That’s what I did, and I had a blind shot
to the green. I had so much hill in front of me that I couldn’t
use a tree top to aim for the green. I had to use a cloud. Honest.
Those hills
are the course’s only defense. There isn’t much sand or water, not
many thickly wooded areas, and it’s not that windy, but the course
plays longer than its yardage because so many of the greens are
elevated.
No. 5 -- the
toughest hole on the course, if you ask me – is a prime example.
It’s a par 4, just 389 yards from the blues and 357 from the whites.
But the green is at least a club and a half uphill, with bunkers
guarding the front. It’s also a very deep green, so a pin-placement
in the back can add an extra club, too.
Although the
course is unspectacular, it is great shape and it plays pretty quickly.
My group got around in just over four hours. That, my friends, is
flying, by the standard around here.
All things
considered, it’s a great place to spend a $20 bill. And get back
a little change.
By
Jeff Fletcher
Editor, sfbaygolf.com
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