Played Skylinks in Long Beach with an 11:24 tee time on a Golf Now hot deal $35 dollars per player including cart. Weather was perfect 85, sunny with little to no wind.
Upon arrival the parking lot w... Continue »

Played Skylinks in Long Beach with an 11:24 tee time on a Golf Now hot deal $35 dollars per player including cart. Weather was perfect 85, sunny with little to no wind.
Upon arrival the parking lot was full, the driving range was full, the putting green was full as was the course. Check in was easy, and we were given a very nicely equipped cart featuring a very nice GPS with map of the course which gave distances to key hazards, and displayed the location of other carts as well as pace of play. The course features a number of dog legs and knowing where the other players carts where was helpful.
We teed off five minutes behind schedule following a fivesome that was following a fivesome, in fact the marshal noted they had been launching mostly fivesomes since 6:30 am. Needless to say, pace of play was slow, but not horribly so. The round would take five hours and twenty minutes. It could have been faster but the fivesome in front of us were slow enough to allow the fivesome in front of them get a full hole ahead. They became J.B. Homes like on the greens.
My buddy and I were paired with a twosome of very capable single digit handicap player who had a skins game and closet to the pin game running between them the whole round. Despite playing for money and being very good, they were fun and a joy to play with. The single who made up our fivesome could best be described as someone who felt they were better than that are and an ass on top of that. After getting frustrated over bad bunker play he proceeded to wreck the best front nine I had ever had at Skylinks by walking in my line of sight as I started my stoke on a downhill put among a couple of such occurrences, as well as being on his phone. Fortunately, he left at the turn.
The club house is nice, and the bar make an efficient snack bar. The driving range is grass, the practice green is very representative of the greens on the course, and there is a nice if not leaf strewn bunker and chipping area.

Golf carts are clean, feature a basket that will hold a small ice chest, and feature an excellent GPS that displays yardage to hazards as well as the position of all other carts in front and behind your group. Your position relative to expected playing time is also shown. The golf cart position is important at this course is defended by numerous doglegs and sightline obscuring fairway bunkers.

A marshal controls groups from the first tee. We tee’d off about five minutes late, and for the most part managed to play with a group on the green, a group in the fairway and a group on the tee on all but the par threes where we naturally bunched up. Tee boxes were uniformly level and lush. Some of the better tee boxes I have played from recently. We would not see another marshal the rest of the round.
Fairways were winter grass with very good coverage all the way to out of bounds. Rough was mostly cut short, where it wasn’t, it was an inch to two-inch Bermuda grass which is hard enough on its own. I felt the fairways were well kept and reasonably repaired across the board. The winter conditions provided for excellent rollout resulting in some really long drives.
Rough was relatively short, and out of bounds and thorn bushes line the fairways. Fairways are lined with a heavy growth of tall trees, keeping the ball in the fairway is imperative for good score.
Bunkers – This course has more fairway bunkers designed to play into multiple depths off the tee than any other local course I can think of. Most bunkers be they fairway or greenside featured steep sloping cliffs that had to be dealt with. Of the half dozen bunkers I tested on Greenskeepers behalf, all were filled with clean deep fluffy sand. If your sand game is off even a little bit there are numerous stokes to be lost here. Most of the golfers in front of us that landed in the bunkers were doing a good job of raking them before moving on.

Greens – the greens were fun, fast, curved, sloped, challenging and in very good condition. Many of the greens feature tall swales surrounding the green impacting sightlines, to complicate shot placement as you try to negotiate the large number of greenside bunkers. Grass coverage was excellent, and most ball marks were being repaired.

We saw the cart girl twice, neither time did she stop for us, but we didn’t try to flag her over either. There were plenty of water stations on course, as well as adequate relief facilities. With the exception of one hole where a sharp dogleg left creates visual trouble for me, where I am unable to establish a distance or see where the fairway is going to open up to the hole, I like this course. The course has length, the blues play 6343, the whites 6060, but the myriad of dog legs and bends mean you have to be able to hit to targets, shape shots especially from the tee, and or carry tall trees. All staff were met were friendly, and helpful. Look forward to playing again soon.