I played Lake Chabot yesterday morning with an 8AM tee time on what was probably the best day for weather. I’ve been wanting to play this course and experience the infamous Par 6 hole. More on th... Continue »

I played Lake Chabot yesterday morning with an 8AM tee time on what was probably the best day for weather. I’ve been wanting to play this course and experience the infamous Par 6 hole. More on that later. In general it was a fun course with decent conditions at a reasonable price. As far as the overall condition of the course go, it was better than I expected. I was fearful that the fairways would be thin and bare. To contrary they were green with decent coverage throughout. Greens rolled smooth at a medium pace. Just a tad slower than I prefer, but in the acceptable range. Most greens are single tier with a traditional back to front slope. Greens are small here. And when I say small, I mean they make the greens at Del Monte look like Rancho Solano greens! Greens were receptive to approach shots and held well struck shots. I wasn’t in any bunkers and this course is light on bunkers. Tee boxes were flat with good coverage albeit with funky grass. Not an issue if using a driver with the ball tee’d up but could cause issues with an iron.

Now for the course layout. It sits on top of a hill so there are tons of elevation changes throughout. Course plays short so you will have a lot of short irons and wedges into the greens. Holes 14-16 have views of the SF bay, the City and the Bay Bridge so that was cool.

The oddest thing about the course is that the entrance road goes right through the middle of Holes 2-6. On an early weekday morning with little golfers out it wasn’t an issue but come prime time weekend, I see a lot of cars being hit with golf balls. Very odd! Speaking of elevation changes, I’m not sure if it was because I had a headache or if it was an optical illusion but most of the holes looked way longer than they actually were. Trust your numbers on you range finder, scorecard, GPS app etc.

Now for the infamous Par 6. It plays extremely downhill and really should just bee a par 5. I played two balls and one I hit into the right rough and had to punch out. Even with a couple poor shots I still had a 5’ putt to save “Par”. The second ball was a fantastic tee shot (that was probably in the top 5 of tee shots for me in the last 3 years). I followed that with a solid 4 iron for a second shot and had all of 80 yards left to the green for my 3rd. Still it was a lot of fun.

In fact i enjoyed the course as a whole. As I mentioned before, given the playing conditions, course layout and price, it gets a thumbs up from me.