Hey St. Louis guys

[Jeff Shelman]

Where should a guy play when he's in town for the Final Four. Not looking for access. Just looking for a few good public options.

Thanks

[Evan Fleisher]

Cross the river and go play Keith Foster's Gateway National...not that far from downtown.

[SPDB]

Go play Annbriar. The 10th (i think) is one of the finest designed holes I've seen. It alone is almost worth the price of admission.  

[Jeff_Stettner]

Gateway is a good choice.
Also in Illinois are Annbriar and Stonewolf, both solid.
Forest Park is in the center of town and, while the golf is nothing special, the experience is cool. I can walk to the first tee in 10 minutes from my house.
If you can play reciprocal courses, the options really improve. Most of the good golf in St. Louis is private. Besides the obvious (and tough to access) STL CC and Bellerieve, Norwood Hills and Glen Echo offer lovely older courses. On the newer side, Persimmon Woods is a pretty good Kieth Foster course just outside of town (really walkable and all golf, no houses or tennis etc...). The Wieskopf/Morrish course at CC of St. Albans is also pretty good. Meadowbrook CC is probably the best hidden gem in the area; good routing and some interesting bunker work by Foster as a redesign.

Hope that helps. Let me know when you are playing if you want some company.

[Steve Pozaric]

Go play Annbriar. The 10th (i think) is one of the finest designed holes I've seen. It alone is almost worth the price of admission.  

You probably mean 11.

It is on:  http://www.annbriar.com/course.html  

I agree with the others.  I have also heard good things about Winghaven, but I have not made it there yet (about 45 min from downtown and they get $95 for a round which is about 50% more than say, Gateway or Annbriar).

[Paul Richards]

Jeff

Annbriar, Gateway National and Stonewolf, in that order.  They are all very fine public-access courses in that area.


Go ILLINI!!!!!



 

[Buck Wolter]

A couple others:
Normandie -- it's a poor man's Glen Echo designed by Foulis about 10 minutes from the Airport. Some really good holes and a bit of a museum piece. It's also rumored to be on the chopping block for a housing development so this could be your last chance. Lot's of character and good terrain and a bargain. If the big ones are booked try here.

Spencer T Olin in Alton Illinois about 30 minutes from downtown. Hosted the PubLinks a couple years ago. The best thing about it is you can hit Fast Eddie's in downtown Alton on the way back to St. Louis. One of the best bars in the world.

Missouri Bluffs -- The original CCFAD in these parts. A bit of a paint by numbers Fazio layout but it's on some interesting terrain and is worth playing.

Hopefully St. Louis will 'show' well this weekend. I'm not sure the city understands how big this is going to be.

Buck

[Jeff_Stettner]

Steve,
Winghaven is okay, but not worth that price of admission. Somewhat of a housing course on pretty bland land. Solid design, but an outsider can definately do better with some of the other suggested courses.

[Andy Acker]

I have had the opportunity to play each course. I would recommend Gateway National. Each hole has unique characteristics and the course can be played at a variety of lengths.

Enjoy!

[mikes1160]

Buck,

Fast Eddie's is an EXCELLENT joint, especially if you haven't had a meal for four days.........what is the specialty, something like "Elwood on a stick"?

Gateway's great. Go to the West End for dinner....Balaban's is a good choice

[Buck Wolter]

Mike-
There's the Big Elwood, Hot Chix on a Stick, Peel and eat jumbo shrimp for $.25 each, 1/2 pound burger is like $1.50 They are supposedly the largest Budweiser seller on the planet. Plus you might end up sharing a table with a  biker chick -- nothing sexier than a woman wearing chaps!

Buck

[Steve Pozaric]

Steve,
Winghaven is okay, but not worth that price of admission. Somewhat of a housing course on pretty bland land. Solid design, but an outsider can definately do better with some of the other suggested courses.

Why am I not surprised that you, a relative newcomer to St. Louis, have played a course that I haven't made it to yet?  

Not having played it, I can't really compare it, but, he does have some very good alternatives in the Gateways and Annbriars.  As an asider, from what I understand, tee times are getting pretty scarce for this weekend at the nicer courses.

Buck:

There is a lot of upside with regard to the biker chick, but then again, I remember having seen a number of biker chicks at Fast Eddies that thought they looked a lot better than they did in their chaps or otherwise (if you know what I mean).  It is a great place with very cold cheap beer and food - you just have to be lucky to find a place to sit.  

[Nick Pozaric]

A word of caution to all, when I was calling around for t-times for some of my members I found out that some of the courses, Mo Bluffs was one of them, was aerifying this week or had just done it recently.  They did not offer the info, I had to ask them about it.

[Steve Pozaric]

Jeff:

Where did you end up while you were in St. Louis & what did you think?

[Jeff Shelman]

Guys,

Meant to post this a little sooner, but have been trying to recover from the Final Four. Here's the report:

I played three times (2 1/2 really) in St. Louis. Played Pevley Farms, an Art Hills course west of town; played the back nine at Stonewolf, a Nicklaus and played Gateway National.

Pevley Farms: It's not bad, but not spectacular either. It's carts only which automatically brings it down for me. That said, there were several good holes. The par threes were quite strong, but I'm not always a fan of Art's par 5s. Several of his par 5s on several courses I've played just seem to take creativity and choice out of a player's hand. For example, the 12th hole at Pevley forces a player to layup because you simply can't see the green on your second shot. That said, the course was in good shape and it seemed to be a pretty fair price.

Stonewolf: I have the least to say about this as it was about 48 degrees, blew extremely hard and we only played nine holes. It wasn't in as good of shape as the other two courses we played. One hole I thought was very good was No. 16, a 350ish par four with an elevated tee and water all the way down the right side. If you play away from the water off of the tee, then the second shot is more difficult because the water just to the right of the green is in play. Flirt with the water off of the tee and the second shot becomes a little easier.

Gateway National: This was the highlight of the trip for several reasons. Reason No. 1: Extremely walkable routing and the management certainly doesn't discourage walking. No. 2: Pace of play was very good. I played there the afternoon of the national championship game and the tee sheet was packed. We teed off at 12:30 and I was concerned about it being too slow. Instead, tee times were 10 minutes apart, there was a marshall that we saw several times and we played in 4:10. No. 3: Very interesting layout. Having played Foster's Harvester in Iowa and The Bandit in Texas, I sometimes wonder why Keith Foster doesn't get more love on here. He certainly seems underrated to me. His courses have an interesting mix of holes, there are few blind shots and the green complexes allow for several different types of shots to be played. No. 4: Golf course (bentgrass everywhere) was in great shape. The greens were smooth and fast and fairly receptive.

In other words, I think it's the kind of course that I want to support. Very, very solid golf at a fair price and little of the crap I don't like.

There you go, my report of the weekend.

[Steve Pozaric]

Jeff:

Thanks.  Gateway is definately my top public in St. Louis.  The only downer is that they had recently burned off a lot of the tall grass which definately takes away from the look and feel of the course.  On the other hand, you could see all the balls people lost in there, but, for the ball hawkers, they are all scorched.  I am sure that would be a huge disappointment for all here when they realized it.  

Pevely has good staff and some interesting holes.  I also dislike the fact it is cart only - some really long walks otherwise.  In bad weather, when it is cartpath only, it is really bad.  I really dislike the 2 holes by the lake (6 and 7) and the green on 17 and agree with your thoughts on 12.  Not bad, there are better.

Glad you had a good time.

[Jeff Shelman]

Steve, I understand your feelings on burning down the long grass at Gateway, but I think they did it the right way. They probably have to do it once in a while for maintainance anyway so the fact that they did it just before the Final Four weekend -- a time when there was going to be a ton of play -- was smart. It helped with pace of play, etc.

My colleague and I got paired up with two other guys (one was a former Hooters tour player) and I don't know if we had more than one or two shots in the burned grass in 18 holes.

The other thing about Pevely that I meant to mention was that I did like the finish. The last four (?) holes are very strong. You didn't like the green on 17? I left it below the hole and made the putt for birdie But I can see your point.

[Steve Pozaric]

Good point as to pace of play.  It would have presented better to the out of town folks had it been done the next week, but, at least you had a chance in finding your ball (after disregarding the 20 or so scorched ones in close proximity    )

To me, 17 can be fun, but it is frustrating.  The severe slopes makes for few viable hole locations.  It definately rewards a well placed approach and absolutely kills anything bad.

A side story on 15 (the hole with the cemetary to the left).  A couple of years ago, my church had a scramble there.  For $20, you could pay a female long drive competitor (locally based) to hit all 4 of your groups tee shots from the womens tee (about 275 give or take).  On a straight line, due to bunkering, it required a carry of about 255-260.  On the 3 groups I saw (we started on the hole) she hit 9 balls on the green.  One of ours was about 2 feet from the hole!  And yes, we made the eagle putt.  Amazing display and fun too.