Played a nice Christmas Eve day round with two buddies at El Dorado and enjoyed some good conditions albeit at a slightly high price. Almost $80 for riding the blues is a bit much for what you get her... Continue »

Played a nice Christmas Eve day round with two buddies at El Dorado and enjoyed some good conditions albeit at a slightly high price. Almost $80 for riding the blues is a bit much for what you get here, but if you can get a slightly better online deal, it's more than worth it. But I guess they can do that on a holiday.

Course is in solid if not spectacular shape. Plenty of green on the fairways to work with but some thin areas around the greens and more browned out areas on the back nine it seemed, but mostly good lies throughout the day. The rough is mixed length, bunkers were okay not great and the tee boxes are mostly good with a few of the par 3s that are getting pounded.

Greens were in nice shape overall and running at around a 9 or 10 on the stimp. Held shots well with any decent trajectory and it seemed as if ball marks were at a minimum. A few of the greens here are deceptively sloped and require good reads to keep your putting numbers down on the day. But not too shabby at all.

We had a fairly slow group ahead of our threesome so we definitely waited to tee off on a lot of holes, but it was to be expected on what turned out to be a busy holiday with fairly perfect winter weather ahead of the rains later that night. No cart service came around all day though which was surprising if they were charging holiday rates.

In ranking the Long Beach public courses, El Dorado has slowly risen up the ranks in my book and is in a firm tie with Skylinks as the best in the area. It's often in better shape as well, but it also boasts a fun and challenging layout despite no elevations or anything else too gimmicky or quirky. Just a good place to play some golf. If that's your thing.