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Marriott Shadow Ridge Golf Course
Rating Details »
- Good for Kids:
- No
6 reviews for Marriott Shadow Ridge Golf Course
7/9/09
Well by now the tendon in my right elbow is gone in mean gone , when I would hit it right OK but if I dug a little grass I was a mess. The greens where OK a little sandy and it was a little easier than the Willow but still challenging. Lot of whoopty doos where your ball goes out of sight. Temperature was 106 by the time we were headed back to the condo and on our way to the pool where we had the special of the day The Summer Hummer ,rum smoothy with pineapple &coconut
I know this isn't a good review it was all a blurry from our late night at Morton's Steak house
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This is a very nice course with very good summer rates! I played at 9am for $45, and finished around 1:30pm. Very few people were on the course, so I felt I had the place all to myself. I did have to call the pro shop from my cell phone to ask for the cart girl, but that's likely because there were too few out there to justify her being out. However, she did show up about 10 min later and then again about an hour later. The cart has a nice GPS too, which is always helpful. Perhaps my only complaint is that most every hole is lined with condos/hotel rooms from the resort. This normally wouldn't be a complaint except I played Desert Willow the next day and appreciated the better landscaping and lack of condos at that place more.
Still a 5 star course, I will definitely be playing here again.
It's hard to review a golf course without reviewing your own play, however I will try my hardest to resist the latter and focus on the former...
The course is perfectly manicured. This was most appreciated after playing on such a dilapidated course on the previous day (Oak Valley). The golf carts feature GPS to tell you how far the center of the pin is (in the form of numbers like you'd see on an old Casio watch, no pretty monitor with an interactive map of the course). Unfortunately, the GPS won't keep your ball out of the giant sand traps that Mr. Faldo has an unhealthy obsession with. Not only are they all over the place, but they are some of the deepest and steepest ones that I've ever seen and tried to escape. They certainly did not help keep my score down.
The driving range is top notch (Callaway balls, grass surface, multiple targets, mountain view, etc.) and the putting greens are immaculate. It was such a relief to see a ball actually stop on them, unlike Oak Valley's back spin defying mess. I'm not saying that I was able to put particularly well, but I was at least able to find a line, the rest comes from not playing enough.
There was one hole where I lost 3 balls into the water. It was not pretty and it basically ruined an otherwise good day score wise. If you are like me, and tend to have your balls travel on the right side of the course, then you will find yourself in some bad situations from water hazards to sand to trees. My ball also had a peculiar inclination to find the cart path, which gave it some extra carry...
If you want to have any chance at a par, then you have to play conservatively (yeah, most courses are like that), but its hard to resist going for the glory when you are on vacation. Nick seemed to have that in the back of his mind while designing the course and will make your life extra hard for reaching for that apple...
Thankfully I broke a thousand and would happily come back for another round or ten here.
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This really a terrific course. The greens, bunkers and fairways are all in perfect condition. Best of all you can buzz around this course in four hours. I played the course twice and both times none us in the foursome had to wait on any of our shots.
The key to scoring on this course if you are mid to high handicap is to play conservatively. You have to think your way around this course. Trying to bomb all your shots will turn a 85 into 95 pretty quick. The bunkers will kill you if you are too aggressive on your approach shots. You need to bring your A game for shots of 75 to 125 yards. GPS is accurate, do not be fooled by the visuals.
Pay the $125, it is well worth it.
For a resort course, this set up is pretty brutal (a good thing) and offers a great challenge for even the most capable of golfers, even from the short-hitter tees. They say that this is one of two Nick Faldo designed courses in the United States (the other is in Orlando) and this course is known as a favorite amongst tourists, critics, and even locals (one of my friends is a golf pro in Palm Springs and he raved about this when I told him I was set up to play here).
I got out in the first group off (cockadoodle-doo) on a Sunday morning (my kind of worship) and we sped around in exactly four hours. Teeing off in the dark, playing a new course with rental clubs did nothing for my scorecard, but nothing could take away the beauty of the sun's morning rays glowing red on the majestic mountains that encircle the desert floor.
The set up is fair, but difficult, and the greens were especially tricky. I don't know what it is, but I just cannot read the Bermuda greens, so I left a lot of shots on the greens. Also, the fairways and areas around the greens are mowed tight, and it seems that I could benefit from some instruction on how to hit wedges from tight lies.
But, most of all, the bunkering is a killer. It seems that he is keen on leaving treacherous bunkers in all the wrong places, and upon consulting the notes on my scorecard, a full 8 of my 89 strokes were made out of the sand which led to too many double bogeys. Thanks a lot, Nick.
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Man it is hot. I mean hot like a bowl of spicy Indian Curry. I have never sweat so much in my entire life. I had swamp ass the entire round. But it was up to me to take a tee time in late July at 2:30 pm. And you know what the staff at the Shadow Ridge Golf Course did? Delivered solid service the whole round! We had fresh cold towels to put over our heads every 9 holes. We had fresh ice in our Igloo coolers to keep our Gatorade chilled. The cart girl made sure that we were hydrated and had fresh ice. They set us (Group of 10) up with a closest to the pin hole and a longest drive hole. They have a great GPS system on their carts. The course is amazingly well kept for late July.
So the main question should be "John, why did you go to play golf in Palm Springs in late July. Isn't it 110 degrees down there?"
Because this round of golf ,one of the better rounds of my life, costs me $60. It is a world class course that should command a fee of $300 and does during the winter. They have some par 4's that are brutal but make you think about your club selection. Our back 9 the average temp was 94 and it was perfect. Nothing but great things to say about the Golf Course at Shadow Ridge.
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