DeepSea14 and I met up at the newly redesigned Poppy Ridge. Gone are the three separate 9 hole layouts used in rotation to create 18 holes for the day, and in place is one standard 18 hole layout wit... Continue »

DeepSea14 and I met up at the newly redesigned Poppy Ridge. Gone are the three separate 9 hole layouts used in rotation to create 18 holes for the day, and in place is one standard 18 hole layout with a separate Par 3 course. This is obviously my first time playing the new layout, and I will admit that I only played the old course twice, so I didn’t have a huge sample to compare it with.

Before I go into the layout, I will give you the down and dirty only the conditions. Overall, very nice. Nothing below an 8. Greens rolled smooth and fast. Fairways had complete coverage throughout the entire course. Fairways presented tight lies but the trade off is good roll out.

Sand traps were an 8-9 in that they had deep fluffy sand. Only 1 was damp and a little compacted. tee boxes were level and divot free. There isn’t any rough to speak of here. Just lush fairway and dirt. Maybe Peter can recall something different.

Onto the layout. It’s a hilly course with WIDE open fairways. Probably the widest fairways I’ve seen in a long time. Much much issue off the tee. A bombers dream for sure. I struggled with the driver all day, yet I finished with the same ball I started with and didn’t have a single double bogey. Like I said WIDE open. Not a tree in sight. There is now only one water hazard on the entire course. That’s a bummer in my opinion. I’d say it was a water conservation thing but they have a ton of excess grass on tee boxes that are 100+ yards long and tightly mowed
“Fairway” grass from tee to green on a 200 yard par 3. If they needed to conserve water there are plenty of areas they could change that would save water yet not affect the playability of the course.

Greens were very large with modest undulations. Some of the greens rivaled those at Rancho Solano in nearby Fairfield, CA. BTW all flags are blue at Poppy Ridge we walked so we didn’t have access to the GPS in the carts and my golf app hadn’t updated the system to the new layout yet. We were often guessing at the pin location in relation to the overall layout of the green.

As mentioned before, the tee boxes while level and lush were. Huge. Sometimes a 100 yards long. We walked the course and for the most part it’s a fairly walkable course. There were only two real back breakers of a transfer. One was actually on a par 3 from the tee to the green which was across the gully. You had to retrace your path from the tee box back to the cart path and walk around the ditch then either walk all the way around the Side of the hill or hike through the barren land with rocks. A little bridge and path would have been nice.

Overall, I preferred the old layout to the new one. Not sure what the motivation was behind it as they didn’t make it any easier to walk nor did they insert any water conservation measures.

Am I disappointed? No, I’d play here again. The conditions coupled with the (NCGA) price is worth it alone. And it’s not that it’s a bad layout. I just preferred the old one.