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Weird reasons you stopped playing a particular course.

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Annhl8rX

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Have you ever sworn off a course for a strange reason? I ask because I think I'm about to do just that. The course I played today is one I've played quite a few times, and I'. Always annoyed by the same thing. They have the in-cart GPS screens, which is great. Unfortunately they have a very annoying feature enabled. On every hole that has greenside bunkers, which is most of them, a reminder pops up that tells you to remember to rake the bunkers (even though they're always poorly maintained). It required you to hit the "return to golf" button before you can see your yardage. The course also has quite a few places where you cross residential streets. At those locations there is a similar reminder to "yield to traffic" which also necessitates hitting the button to get back to your yardage.

I'm well aware this is a stupid reason to swear off an otherwise decent course that is reasonably priced. It just drives me nuts, though.

The worst is number 8. It has a road crossing leading into it (push the button), bunkers around the green (push the button), and the option to order food for the turn (push the button). It's a par 3, so if things go well I'll push the button as many times as I hit the ball on that hole.

So...have you ever avoided a course for an admittedly petty reason?
 
Can't think of any weird reasons TBH, some courses just are bad and get old, staff is bad, and layout conditions have gone downhill.
 
Fox Hollow up here. I haven't played it but they have a golf dome that is poorly maintained and they charge you a fortune that you pay by the minute and the staff is awful.
 
Pembroke CC about 3 minutes from my house. It's changed hands probably 5-6 years ago and they did a lot of work to it which was desperately needed. Then they stopped. Bunkers: I'd swear they're actually concrete. Tee boxes torn up, large diseased spots in fairways. At $39.00 to walk I'm all set. Too bad I like most of the layout and as mentioned earlier right down the street from my house. Not a weird reason, they just let it go to sh*t.
 
Scrap Iron said:
Fox Hollow up here. I haven't played it but they have a golf dome that is poorly maintained and they charge you a fortune that you pay by the minute and the staff is awful.
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Jesus have not thought of that course for years. (If it's the one in Littleton I am thinking of) played there once in the 90's and was treated poorly. Liked the course though. Usually just stuck to foothills or Willis case, and played the Arvada courses to mix it up.


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I quit playing a course because of a 2 hole corner of the property. It's like they ran out of land when they were laying out the course and just said..."we'll make it work".
The 317 yard par 4 13th hole is a severely downhill first shot of just under 200 yards. Any longer and you go into 2 deep bunkers. The hole then doglegs left more than 90 degrees uphill 110 yards to a long skinny 3 tiered green.
The 14th hole is a boring 165 yard downhill par 3 that has a green that is always covered in pine needles, so you have to spend a bit of time wiping away the needles so you can put. You would think they would put either a broom or soft rake near the green, but no.

I hated those 2 holes and quit playing that course for 5 years. Till my wife started playing golf and she fell in love with it while playing with a girl friend. I have since gotten over my issues with the holes and now play it regularly. It really is a good course and if they could do something else with those holes, it would be a great local course.
 
Wil-Mar GC here in Raleigh because of some awful par-3 tee boxes and slow play.

Few of the par-3 tee boxes are surrounded by trees so grass cannot grow. Tee boxes end up being just sand pits - would be fine on holes when I'm taking driver or 3 wood but not good when hitting my irons. No fun.

Not necessarily petty but...plenty of other places around here where I can get on for $40.
 
tucsoncacti said:
Jesus have not thought of that course for years. (If it's the one in Littleton I am thinking of) played there once in the 90's and was treated poorly. Liked the course though. Usually just stuck to foothills or Willis case, and played the Arvada courses to mix it up.


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Haha. Must be something in the name. The one I'm talking about is in the heart of Calgary.
 
There is a course that is closer to me than any other.
We quit playing there because the owners wife will let groups of 7 to 9 players go out during weekend prime hours.
We tell her and she always say there was a group of 5 and a group of 4.
She won't believe they grouped up after leaving the clubhouse.
You can't see any of the course from the clubhouse.
They had a driving range that was honor system.
You get a large bucket and put $5 in a slot on the building.
After about 3 years, she told her husband that out of every dozen buckets, they only got 5 or 10 dollars.
They bought some brand new Titleist NXT Tour range balls from a place in Arizona.
At the end of last Sumner she asked her husband where he was putting all of the balls he picked up.
Over 4 or 5 months, the people had stolen over 9600 new balls!!!
She is an airhead, and I can't stand to even go there.
 
I have a friend who quit playing a course because there were too many holes that you couldn't see the green from the teebox. Another course we will only play in the afternoon because of the bugs in the morning but that is about as weird as I can think of.
 
fairband said:
I have a friend who quit playing a course because there were too many holes that you couldn't see the green from the teebox. Another course we will only play in the afternoon because of the bugs in the morning but that is about as weird as I can think of.
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I can see avoiding a course for both of those reasons. Bugs suck, and I don't know where I should hit it if I can't see the green.
 
I left my home course for a year after winning a horse race during our year end tournament. I outlasted players far above my skill level and it was a huge source of pride.

Why did I leave? Instead of the cash prize that was awarded in previous years, they awarded a small bottle of Jack Daniels and a gift certificate for 4 rounds of golf with cart rental.

It was a dumb reason, but I was pissed about it, and took my money elsewhere for over a year.
 
There's a course not far from here that I enjoyed when I first moved to the area. It's a semi-private course that's in really, really poor shape. The carts are abysmal (almost to the point of being death traps). The clubhouse smells like someone poured the contents of an outhouse onto the carpet. The locker room has lockers falling off the wall and the restroom stalls look like they haven't been cleaned since Nixon was President. All that said... it's local... and I really like the layout. I wish they'd do a better job of maintaining the course because it's a fun layout with some challenging holes. If they took care of it even a little, I think they could get a lot of play and despite all the other issues... I'd even consider joining.

I stopped playing there about 10 months ago because I showed up about 50 minutes early for a tee time I had booked one morning. The course was empty and the parking lot only had a handful of cars in it, so... I figured there weren't many people waiting to tee off. I checked in and the 184 year old guy at the pro shop gave me an attitude. No big deal... he's old... it's early... I kinda get it. I asked him if I could tee off a bit early and he told me (in a not-so-polite way) that I couldn't. Hmmmmm, okay. His course... his rules. No big deal. I'll just putt a bit. I go outside to putt on their extremely small practice green and he comes busting through the back door screaming at me to stop hitting more than one ball on the practice green. I had no idea if he was joking or how to react. I let him go back inside and I continued to putt until it was time to tee off. I was playing alone, and as I said... there was nobody on the course, so... I played the front side in about an hour. At the turn, I stopped to use the restroom and he yelled at me for playing too fast.

I couldn't take it. I packed up my bag and left at that point. I wrote a note to the course detailing my day and I received a response that essentially said that if I didn't like the way I was treated, there were other options in the area for where to play and I was welcome to take my business elsewhere.

So... I did. I joined a country club 2 months later and I haven't looked back.

I guess it's not a weird reason not to go back... but the experience was weird.
 
There is a course in town that used to be the best public course in the area 15-20 years ago. Good layout, always well maintained. Good value for the money, can't remember it ever being more than $40 for 18 and a cart. Difficult course, but good scores could be had for sure. It has changed ownership a few times I think, each with 'improvements'.

Can't remember how many years ago it was, but went out with some friends on a weekend afternoon since none of us had played it in a while. Took well over 5 hours to play, and wasn't all that crowded. Did I mention it's the only public course that sells alcohol? Nothing but drunks on the course goofing off, and they did absolutely nothing to try and speed things up. Would just get the "course is kinda slow ahead of you" from the rolling Marshall we saw a few times. Swore never to go back there again. Maybe someday on a weekday perhaps, just to see, but I'm in no rush at all to go back there.
 
I quit playing a course called Settlers Hill in Batavia because the 3 times I have played in they have had pins in locations that are not pinnable. Side hill pins. You could not get the ball with in 3 feet of the hole unless you made the putt. smh
 
Does because they effed us over count?

Last year, Jacqui and I had $160,000 in the bank going into winter (we know this because the bookkeeper told us). That is unheard of at Painted Hills. The years our Area Director ran the course (over ten years), they were in the red or barely in the black every year heading into winter. In fact, the courses former owner, who Jacqui went to and became his Food and Beverage Manager, could not believe how much money we made them. He was wondering if he sold it too soon.

But they let us go (on December 21, right before Christmas) to hire a couple of people with "a better skill set". From what we have heard so far, that's not working very well for them. That comes from people we still know there, and from the customers. They no longer have Girls Night Out, and it looks like they phased out our Couples Fun Nights as well. They cancelled their in-house Masters tournament a few days before because they didn't get enough sign-ups.

So until somebody else buys the course, we won't be heading back to Painted Hills, nor any Great Life course. Which sucks, because we loved that place, and Great Life owns a lot of courses in town.
 
Most of the reasons here seem to center around mismanagement, which I don't consider a weird reason to stay away from a course. Some of the other reasons are verging on weird, but to each his own.
 
Douchey starter. Had nothing to do with the course but he was a donkey


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I've stopped playing courses because the Rating/Slope is just too far out of whack to form any semblance of a proper handicap. There's one course that I could legitimately and legally become a sandbagger just by playing there because it's tough and a 69/115.
 
I stopped playing a certain course in Dallas due to the crack head always trying to sell me found balls packaged in a bread bag. Every time I went he was there. Totally sketchy.
 
Architex said:
I stopped playing a certain course in Dallas due to the crack head always trying to sell me found balls packaged in a bread bag. Every time I went he was there. Totally sketchy.
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Cedar Creat or Golf Club of Dallas? I've seen it at both courses.


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Cedar Crest
 
Not weird but stopped playing one course because it was too slow. It's one of the best deals in the area as it is a tough course but also very cheap so it attracts all levels of golfers. A 5-6 hour round on a Saturday is common. I only go there for weekday twilight rounds now.
 
i try to avoid orgasm courses... What I mean by that is the ones all the "Bro's" like to frequent and every time someone hits a decent tee shot there are about four or five voices shouting. Then the rampant fist bumping and chest thumping ensues...
 
So not going to stop playing my home course, but starter kinda made me mad this weekend. I showed up early for a 1230 tee time, wanted to chip and putt before my start time. Just me and a buddy, saw this older guy talking to some young lady, no one on the tee box, so we decided to head out. Passed the Cart girl who was selling a lot of beer to a group of guys. On way to hole one, I hear whistling and yelling behind me, I stop, and here comes starter waving his arms (this is the old man talking to the young lady), and he's like where are you guys going, I tell him we had a 1230 and decided to head out now since no one has teed off for over 20 minutes. He then tells me, nope can't go you have a foursome that is heading out first. Oh the foursome buying a bunch of beer up the hill there? They are far from ready, why don't you let us go ahead since we are a twosome? Nope you have to wait. I wanted to argue, but decided not to, they went ahead of us (after waiting another five minutes for them to finish buying beer, and scoop up their girlfriend, and of course after two holes they let us play through. I guess it was a power play by starter because we passed him, while he was trying to hit on a young girl?? No idea, but left a bit of bad taste in my mouth.


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