Yucaipa Valley GC

Played there 2-9-11 and the weather was great!

The course was in OK shape with its usual uneven tee boxes, (which are quite bare right now), and very inconsistent fairways that have more than their fair share of bare spots. For some reason this place never tries to fix their fairways and I'm sure this effects most players' attitude(s) about the course. Our group has taken to 'winter rules' for the fairways, -and that is for the entire year!

Rest of the course:

The greens were for the most part fast-but-bumpy, which is a very bad combination. Lots of poa annua has embedded itself into the greens and that doesn't help. I give the greens a 6/10, but only because of the great configurations and undulations which make them more than average tough. The rough is very thin right now due to the cold season, but not too bad. The bunkers are very inconsistent with too many rocks, but somewhat playable.

Pace of play was slow. It took over five hours to play as we waited on every tee box due to a slow-moving Men's Club. A lot of this was probably due to the greens and how they were playing, -especially with some very tough pin placements.

Our group:

We had 18 players and we have now instituted a $8 'buy-in' participation fee to deter big losses at the end of the round. Pretty simple way to figure things out too. ($1 dollar goes to each team for each skin, greenie, birdie and sandy par. If someone is lucky enough to have an eagle, his team gets $4. The rest of the pot is broken down 50/30/20 for 1st, 2nd and 3rd.) We still use best three-out-of-four scores per hole and decide first through last by overall tally. Because we have so many players now on a weekly basis, there were a couple times when the last place team was dishing out $14-$17 apiece, which is a little ridiculous for our meager selves.

Best quote of the day: "And you probably like it up the ass too!", said by Tim after hearing Dave say how much he likes losing as long as he gets to play with a certain guy who likes to drink beer at the same pace he does. (At least we know Joe is loved by someone!)

Ralph, Mark and I tied for first with Elliott, Vito and Jon while George's team trailed the pack and ended up getting $4 back to split among the four of them. No blood, no foul.

All-in-all, Yucaipa has a very nice layout of holes that one can endear as long as you can live with the somewhat sketchy conditions.