Talk of The Villages Florida - View Single Post - Are the Championship golf courses too expensive?
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Old 03-07-2022, 01:12 PM
Laker14 Laker14 is offline
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Originally Posted by laboutj View Post
Compare oranges to tangerines:

Juliette Falls is a really nice course, $67 before 9am and that includes a cart. Conditions are superior to Villages championship courses.
Harbor Hills is around $45 and that includes cart, similar conditions to Villages championship courses.
Mission Inn El Campeon is superior to the villages and the Villagers special is around $75 and that includes cart.

Travel a little farther to Orlando and you've got quite a few courses with superior conditioning to what you get in the Villages for about the same price.

In the Villages you're paying for the convenience of using your own cart. Personally I would take the better conditions over the convenience.
That's a very reasonable preference on your part. My group played Juliet a couple of years ago. It was in better shape than the Championship Courses here, generally. Not spectacularly so, but it was a nice experience. It was also a hassle getting back and forth, thanks to the Florida winter traffic. The general feeling of the group was positive. However, we have not been back, due to the inconvenience of travel.

This year we did make a trip to El Campeon. Also generally favorable response. Conditions were OK, not great. If better than TV Championship, not wildly so. Much tougher course though. Not as convenient as most of the courses in TV to get to, but not bad. Much easier than Juliet.
My preference, and evidently the preference of our group of 12-20 guys, seems to be convenience. We haven't been back to either place yet, but I'm sure we will at some point. But never on a regular basis to replace the TV courses.