When you arrive at Willow Park Golf Course, the first thing you notice
is a big lake to your left. This lake is the driving range, where all your
balls end up wet! (and floating). A very creative feature of an otherwise
plain golf course.
Willow is a "very" public course, and with that comes both good and
bad. The good includes being treated like you belong and very reasonable
prices. The bad is that the course is not in great shape, and that it is
really a hacker's paradise.
By this I mean that this track is tight, with lots of parallel fairways
and unprotected tee boxes. I heard "Fore" yelled more here than anywhere
I have ever played.
I even had a ball driven over my head onto the green I was chipping
onto, dear readers, but more on that later!
Willow Park does have its challenges. There is a creek that runs down
the
right side of the entire front nine. Its pretty well hidden by brush, but
trust me, it is there, and is like a ball magnet for any righty with a
touch of slice. I am proud to say that I kept my Pinnacles dry all day.
The course plays relatively short, 5,500 from the whites, and 5,200
from the reds. The Blue tees are no longer used. Five of the par fours
play less than 330 yards from the whites (including three less than 300).
Toss in a couple of doglegs, however, and you do have to keep the ball
in the middle to score (it always comes down to that, doesn't it). The
greens were soft, which means balls hit to them stay there, which is nice.
They were also slow, so putting required more muscle than touch.
It was at one of those short par fours, the 14th, 275 yards from an
elevated tee box, that I was nearly decapitated (well, it wasn't that close,
but it is a shock to the system to have one rain down on you while you're
chipping!). A guy in the group behind me, who was in no way a candidate
to pull this off, drove the green. When I figured out where the ball had
come from, I decided to stick around and watch the putt. After all, how
many eagles do you see made at your local muni? He left it short but made
his birdie - nothing to be ashamed of!
Another first for me was watching my playing partner skull a wedge into
a tree on the par three 16th. Not up in the branches, into a small squirrel
hole in the base. Willow Park seems like one of those courses where things
like this are possible.
I will say, that, other than ducking a lot (even the carts don't have
roofs, so you're never completely safe), I enjoyed my round at Willow.
The views are peaceful, lots of mountains and green trees, and the people,
on the course and in the pro shop, were great. Just regular golf guys.
Most of whom just were not that straight off the tee.
