Played Coyote Hills on a beautiful Sunday morning with a 8:30am tee time. It was my first time out to the "Hills" and I was pleasantly surprised by this unique, often quirky layout. This is target gol... Continue »

Played Coyote Hills on a beautiful Sunday morning with a 8:30am tee time. It was my first time out to the "Hills" and I was pleasantly surprised by this unique, often quirky layout. This is target golf at it finest, this is not a "bombers" course and you rarely need (or want) more than about 220-230 off the tee. The course is fitted into an area that is very small and the slope of the mountain has a HUGE affect on nearly every hole, and not just the greens, but the fairways as well. So lets get to it, before we delve into the course, lets talk about the softer stuff.

The facilities here are average. Driving range was mats only (I hate that), and both putting greens had "no chipping" signs, so I'm not sure where you'd be able to practice chipping. Granted, I didn't have a whole lot of time to to warm up, so I didn't look, so it might exist and I just missed it. The service was OK. The pro shop was helpful and starter got us off on time but we never saw a marshal until #17 (5 1/2 hrs later) and beverage cart attendant, while helpful, had awful course etiquette. She routinely drove up on us while hitting and probably needs a little education.

The conditions of the course were very good. The course played very firm & fast, which is to be expected given the lack of water, but made it really difficult to keep the ball in play. This course was not designed with much bailout area, so having a ball roll out 50-60 yards is really tough. Greens were in excellent condition, they were medium fast, very consistent and didn't really have too much damage. The fringe however, wasn't good at all. Lots of greens had fringe that showed some kind of disease/dead grass that made putting/chipping from the fringe a crap shoot. The fairways & rough were very thin but I only had a handful of "poor" fairway lies and were generally pretty good.

The layout of Coyote Hills is it's differentiator. It's a short (6000 from the men's tees, 6500 from the tips) and is the definition of Target Golf. Many of the holes are really quirky and local course knowledge is useful. #1 for example, if you bomb a drive down the middle-right of the fairway, there's a decent chance you catch the slop and end up next to an oil derrick, so you're probably better off hitting a long iron/hybrid off the tee and stay on top of the hill leaving yourself with a mid-iron to the green. Nearly every hole has those kind of issues that you need to assess on the tee box. Also, it's a par 70 with just 2 par 5's, but both of them are squeezed in. For example the par 5, #11th, played 485 but the landing zone is a small strip of fairway, maybe 15-20 yards wide and slopes severely into a barranca with a fairway bunker guarding the opposite side of the fairway. The other par 5 is a little better, but again it requires a perfectly shaped shot to have access to the green.

If you come to CH and expect a target golf course, you'll be fine, but don't expect a wide open layout that is forgiving. Even though it's short, this is NOT a course for beginners or anybody who can't hit it very straight. We had a group of 30 people, and not one of the 20+ handicappers broke 100 (highest score was 128). So keep that in mind.