Crystal Lake Golf Club

I enjoyed the course overall. They do need to have better direction by the Rangers on the course to pick up pace of play. Soft holes on the back nine have improved but can be issue if there have been recent rains. Clubhouse amenities are very good with newly opened pub for food and drink. Good value for the money especially if you watch for 2 for 1 coupons in local paper. Will go there on a regular basis.

I hadn't played this course in years, but wanted to try it again. I was pleasantly surprised at the course. The rough wasn't as long as I remembered and we could find errant shots without too much trouble. We have had a lot of rain so I wasn't surprised that some areas were a little soggy, In fact it was better than I had expected. Because of my being unfamiliar with the course we played up a tee box. It still had some challenging holes. The counter and starter people were pleasant and helpful. They were running a 2 for 1 coupon in the newspaper which is another reason we decided to go there. Glad we did.

I bought a membership to Crystal Lake for this season, since it offers one of the better values in the metro area. I will say they have done a great job taking care of the course since it opened for the season in March. It provides some challenging holes, along with a few that are real birdie opportunities.

The two items that I have an issue is the pace of play and the number of events booked here. The rangers do absolutely nothing at this course to get slow moving groups to pick up the pace. They drive in circles, while not even giving groups a verbal cue of whether they're on pace. I've run into this issue numerous times this year. Also, I'm not thrilled that tee times are unavailable for 3-4 nights each week. I understand league nights take up two nights, but it seems like Mondays and Fridays are constantly booked with events, leaving members to try for a 6:45 tee time at best. It's ridiculous paying for a course, only to have it available for 50% of the days at best. I hope they take this into consideration during future seasons.

Crystal Lake Golf Club is a very attractive suburban course built within a housing development, so that houses line one side or the other of most fairways. We played the course in late May, and the fairways were in surprisingly good condition, smooth and well manicured. Tree coverage on most fairways is fairly sparse, but there are well-placed fairway bunkers on several holes and water or marshy lateral hazards on at least half of the fairways. The rough is high enough to be punitive, but you can still get a wedge on the ball to steer you back to the fairway. Most of the course is set on gently rolling terrain, but there are significant elevation changes, especially on several of the par 3's where the tees are set high above the greens. The greens are fairly large and undulating, roll true and moderately fast. Most of the greens are well protected by bunkers that are filled with very playable sand. Upon arriving at the course, we were pleased to see that it has excellent practice areas, including a driving range with numerous targets, an enormous putting green, and a practice bunker and chipping green. We had reviewed the course information available on their website, including the course. We were therefore unpleasantly surprised when the starter at the first tee told us that holes 12 through 15 were “cart path only.” Sure enough, the first local rule on the scorecard states just that. The reason became clear enough when we arrived at hole number 13 (holes 12 and 14 are par 3's, which are cart path only at most courses) we found that this part of the course winds through a marsh. The fairway is wet and spongy and you can bounce up and down on it. Ditto for most of the 15th fairway. This is unfortunate, because number 13, a 489 yard (from the middle tees) par 5 has a really well-designed layout requiring good placement on your tee shot and good thinking on your second shot in order to give yourself a chance for a par. Increasing the difficulty of those shots by having to play from the spongy turf takes away a little of the fun from this hole. There are many really “pretty” holes on this course, which you can review by going to the course tour on the website. I enjoyed playing the course and think it's a good value. But not knowing about the “cart path only” nature of holes 13 and 15 before arriving at the course prompts me to give it a 4 star rating.

The overall course condition was pretty good. The greens were nice. The only challenge that keeps it from being an easy course is the abundance of water hazards on the course. Expect to lose a few balls.

Conditions were quite good for early season, the greens were better than I was expecting. I really like 16 of the 18 hoes on this course. The two poor holes are numbers 13 & 15, which are a couple of holes built on top of a swamp. The fairways of these two holes are like walking on a soggy trampoline. Sadly, I'm not sure what they can do to fix it.