I finally made it out to Cinnabar Hills after all these years and being so close to it. I can tell you right away that this wont be my last time playing here. What a great course! I’ve heard so mu... Continue »

I finally made it out to Cinnabar Hills after all these years and being so close to it. I can tell you right away that this wont be my last time playing here. What a great course! I’ve heard so much about it with everyone always raving about how good this track is. Well, I’m here to say they were all right. It’s a gem!

Starting with the clubhouse, you think you are in a private country club setting not some public muni course. In fact the clubhouse is so nice they have TV’s in the urinal walls. There’s also a shower in case you want to hose off after the round in the hot weather.

Pro shop attendant in the morning was having a bad day and was a bit grumpy. Afternoon staff was fine. We played the the Lakes / Mountain combination. Both 9’s were similar in style in that they had fairly open fairways sans a couple holes that had tight landing areas or gully’s to navigate. Course is on a hillside so there are plenty of elevation changes. Sort of like Carmel Valley Ranch, Cinnabar has most of the holes playing downhill. They have you drive up the hill to the next tee box so just about 90% of the holes play downhill.

Practice green was super tricky. However we found the green complexes on the course to be great. They rolled at the perfect medium-fast pace where downhill putts were slippery but you could get aggressive on uphill putts. I will say that I think we had more than our share of generous pin locations which helped tame the greens. There were a few tough pins but most were accessible

Fairways were being treated with some fertilizer that didn’t affect play too much, more the smell and aesthetics. Still, they were lush throughout. A couple fairways were soggy which prevented roll out.

Tee boxes were mainly level with lush coverage and divot free for the most part. Bunkers had great quality sand, though a few hadn’t been properly raked. We tee’d off at 10AM so and weren’t in any hurry at all so we slipped back a hole as to not pressure the group in front and we never had anyone behind us all day. The next group was easily 3 holes back.

As I said at the beginning, this was a blast of a course and I can see why people rave about it. I too will be one of the one’s raving about Cinnabar Hills!