Whistling Straits...Very Poor Golf Experience

[kconway]

I played WS Saturday and it was not a top class golf experience (per the price).

5.5 hour round and very poor course condition made it a very expensive dissapointment.

Earlier in the week I played Ballyneal and it was a significantly better golf exeperience.

[Matt_Cohn]

Somebody will ask you to explain or reason your post, so, might as well be me...

[Dean Stokes]

Somebody will ask you to explain or reason your post, so, might as well be me...

didn't kc explain his post 5.5 hours/crap condition/too expensive. Sounds like valid reasons to be disappointed to me.

[PThomas]

were the fairways in poor shape??the greens ? both?

a rough spring here in the Midwest might explain the conditions to some degree

[RJ_Daley]

Sheboygan county where WS is located has been inundated by mini floods, and I suspect that even the sand capping and extraordinary drainage that exists on WS and Irish couldn't keep up.  So, I'd atleast give them the benefit of the doubt on conditioning.

As for price, and time to play a round there, I cut them no quarter... 

[Matt_Cohn]

Somebody will ask you to explain or reason your post, so, might as well be me...

didn't kc explain his post 5.5 hours/crap condition/too expensive. Sounds like valid reasons to be disappointed to me.

Fair enough. I guess I was thinking that people usually don't sign onto GCA and just write "this course was good" or "that course was lame." There's usually a desire to incite some sort of discussion. That's what I was uncertain about - I should have been clearer.

[Kalen Braley]

Sounds like a round at Pebble in the winter time with wet sloppy conditions.....

Excuse me, I must now run for cover!!!

[kconway]

I was talking to a caddy there who said that they have always had trouble with the fescue fairways. 

This year, based on the cold winter/spring, the fairways have not come in very well and were very scruffy.

Maybe the type of fescue they have planted doed not work well in the wisconsin climate.

[JR Potts]

I've played WS about 10 times.....9 of those were excellent rounds played under excellent conditions.

1 time, about 7 years ago, I too noticed issues with the fairway grass.

That being said, I love it and look forward to playing it again.

[PThomas]

kconway:  when you made your tee time did they tell you about the condtioning problems?  if not , shouldn't they have?  shoudln't golfers be assured of at the very minimum decent course conditions if they are paying full rate?? i assume they did NOT discount your(substantial ) fee there , did they?

reminds me of a game i played this spring at one of the COg Hill courses (NOT Dubsdread)....there was a sign up saying that they did NOT have a storm alert system there, that (paraphrasing) you were on your own if a storm blew in...

this truly surprised me.....i would have thought that a facility the likes of Cog would have such a system in place, that they certainly could afford it...one might even argue that they SHOULD have such a system in place in order to protect the safety of their customers

[Andy Troeger]

The time I played (over Memorial Day) a few years ago they had fairly significant issues with the fairway grasses. They explained that it had not come in well at that point in the year. I believe they did give us some kind of discount and called us prior to the round to alert us of the issue in case we wanted to cancel or reschedule.

The issues were nothing we couldn't work around, essentially a fair bit of GIR situations and a few green tarps that made the pictures a little unsightly.

[Rick Shefchik]

kconway:  when you made your tee time did they tell you about the condtioning problems?  if not , shouldn't they have?  shoudln't golfers be assured of at the very minimum decent course conditions if they are paying full rate?? i assume they did NOT discount your(substantial ) fee there , did they?

reminds me of a game i played this spring at one of the COg Hill courses (NOT Dubsdread)....there was a sign up saying that they did NOT have a storm alert system there, that (paraphrasing) you were on your own if a storm blew in...

this truly surprised me.....i would have thought that a facility the likes of Cog would have such a system in place, that they certainly could afford it...one might even argue that they SHOULD have such a system in place in order to protect the safety of their customers

Paul,

My home club has the same policy. As I understand it, they purposefully do not have a weather warning system for legal reasons, i.e., if they have it but don't use it for some reason, and someone gets hit by lightning, they can be sued for negligence.

At least, that's the explanation I recall. I don't agree with it, and I don't like it.

[Steve Kline]

The time I played WS I had the same experience as kc and was given the same reasoning for the fairways. You literally could only play out of one or two fairways because they were all sand. You had to take your ball out of the fairway and drop it in the rough. I think they took like 30 dollars off. Not near enough imo. I really don't have much desire to play the course again. I enjoyed the other three courses though.

[jeffwarne]

I think the bigger question is......


why did you leave Ballyneal?

[PThomas]

kconway:  when you made your tee time did they tell you about the condtioning problems?  if not , shouldn't they have?  shoudln't golfers be assured of at the very minimum decent course conditions if they are paying full rate?? i assume they did NOT discount your(substantial ) fee there , did they?

reminds me of a game i played this spring at one of the COg Hill courses (NOT Dubsdread)....there was a sign up saying that they did NOT have a storm alert system there, that (paraphrasing) you were on your own if a storm blew in...

this truly surprised me.....i would have thought that a facility the likes of Cog would have such a system in place, that they certainly could afford it...one might even argue that they SHOULD have such a system in place in order to protect the safety of their customers

Paul,

My home club has the same policy. As I understand it, they purposefully do not have a weather warning system for legal reasons, i.e., if they have it but don't use it for some reason, and someone gets hit by lightning, they can be sued for negligence.

At least, that's the explanation I recall. I don't agree with it, and I don't like it.

hmmm, that's interesting Rick, i never thought of that side of the argument, thanks

of course, they could also get sued for not having one too, i would think...

[Mark Smolens]

I had the discount for bad fairways rate at WS two Memorial Days prior to the PGA held there.  They actually took $100 off the then-$275 green fee.  There was little if any grass on over half of the fairways, and the caddy was saying that Mr. Kohler was thinking about covering the fairways during the winter in the same way that greens get covered.

The Straits is a beautiful, scenic place, but it certainly doesn't play like a links course. . .  For my $$ the middle 9 holes on the River is the must play part of Kohler golf in Wisconsin.

[Chris Garrett]

How far in advance did you book the tee time?  I'd be shocked if they knew about the conditions and didn't tell you.  During the summer of '02, when I interned there, they faced some minor issues and gave away tee gifts to everyone who played.  The following year, they faced more serious issues and heavily discounted the greens fees.

Rounds have and always will hover around 5.5 hours at the Straits.  This is due to what I term the "resort" effect.  Plus, they tend to have smaller outings (16-24 people) at multiple points throughout the day.  We all know how the majority of those work out...

[Tony Gorski]

I agree with Chris.  I played the course this May and they went out of their way to apologize for the course conditions........$100 rebate, phone call prior to my travels, and several apologetic discussions prior to teeing off.

With all that said, and aside from the suboptimal turf conditions and 5.5hour round, I was less than impressed with the layout.

The bunker designs left of 10 and on 11 look like a mine field where all the mines exploded.  I've played most of the great courses in Scotland and Ireland and fail to see the similarity, as was intended.  I think they went a bit too far in over-designing some of these areas.

[Greg Chambers]

From reading the posts, it seems bad conditions are common in the spring, which begs the question, why would they not go with another grass type?

[Joe Bentham]

Rounds have and always will hover around 5.5 hours at the Straits.  This is due to what I term the "resort" effect.  Plus, they tend to have smaller outings (16-24 people) at multiple points throughout the day.  We all know how the majority of those work out...

There is no excuse for 5.5 hours anywhere at anytime.  At a resort or anywhere else.  Golf dosen't take that long and Americans either need to figure that out or quit the game.  Is also troubling that that pace is excepted and accepted by the staff at WS

[Tony Ristola]

From reading the posts, it seems bad conditions are common in the spring, which begs the question, why would they not go with another grass type?

Having seen scores of courses emerge from the type of winters I expect they have in WI, the golf course is at the mercy of Mother nature.

In Scandinavia, with their tight soils in some parts, they lose their fairways every year. The combination of cutting height, soils and climate does them in; they turn to poa from their seeded grass really quick. Greens are a toss-up proposition. They'll lose some, parts of others. The bottom of drain patterns get hit, as this is where ice can form. Interesting, the roughs, don't die out. I saw virtually pure fescue roughs a decade after they were planted.

If you get the snow, thaw, cold (ice) nightmare... a superintendent is in for some fun. Ice is a bugger. Bents and fescues can last a couple weeks under it, but after that... the grass is hanging by a thread.

If the spring is cold, the super will have a tough time getting new grass to grow. One good frost and he'll lose the seed that's germinating. For these reasons I have the greatest respect for superintendents in these climates. They have the toughest jobs in golf.

One funny story. A buddy of mine, a superintendent in Finland had a brand spanking new course. The course grew-in fantastically the year before. After the winter he'd lost a few bluegrass fairways, but said "the poa annua came in like a dream". 

[Greg Chambers]

I understand what it is like to endure long cold snowy winters, cold springs, cool summers, etc as I am a super in CO at 8000 feet.  This is why I ask the question.  Yes, there are years when you can do nothing but throw up your hands.  However, if it is a continual and constant pattern then you obviously don't have the proper turf type for the conditions.

[Russell Lo]

Just returned from a 3 day, 36 hole per day experience. After visiting Bandon the last two years we decided to try something different. What a great experience. Being from Hawaii, every destination is expensive (so is living in Hawaii for for that matter) so I try to define the golf, accomodations and overall experience without getting too much into the QPR (quality to price ratio). That being said, it wasn't cheap, but from a golfe's standpoint I found it pretty outstanding.

The BAD first. We played the River course the day it re-opened. the Sheboygan sas humming, high on the banks and solid brown flowing quickly. Parts of the course were super soggy and many of the greens were pretty slow due not only to being unable to mow the greens, but also being unable to get the mowers to the greens. I loved the layout, even though one of the tee boxes (the 12th) would have been a doozy from the back, they had moved it up to play 130 yds, bypassing the Cottonwoods on the left all because the tee and bottom 1/3rd of the cottonwoods were still underwater. I would love to play it again, but condition wise this was disappointing.

I thought the Meadow Valleys course was supposed to be the easier course. Get outta town! Even with a forecaddie the Heather eats balls up. i'm talking about all sorts of trouble, and this was on the front nine. Great layout and would be a blast to play that course several times.

At Whistling we ended the same way we started on Day 1, Irish then Straits. I've played most of the courses in Hawaii and played Bandon two years in a row and would be hard pressed to find a more enjoyable experience than on the Straits course. My opinion is probably due to a birdie on 18 (2 iron hybrid, 4 iron hybrid, 15 foot downhill l-r snake) and a 60 foot birdie on #3 with a 25 foot rt-to left break. Two birdies that I won't forget soon. Condition wise the fairways were sandy in some places, but based on what the caddies told us of a high percentage of bunkers being washed out the previous week the course was very playable.

Some of the runup shots  like the approach on #4 didn't run out due to the softness of the conditions and new sod, otherwise it was great. The last day we played we got a 45 minute delay coming in off of 9 (great timing) due to asystem blowing through, otherwise I didn't even notice how long it took. Beleive me, the way I was playing i should have noticed any and every little thing to bother me.

Overall, one of the top experiences I've had.

[rjsimper]

Out of curiosity, did you expect WS to be better than Ballyneal?  Your original post makes it sound that way.

[PThomas]

fwiw, Milwaukee, which is an hour from Kohler, has had more rain this month than in any other month in its recorded history

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