Played Hacienda yesterday Sept 19th
 

A total dog track. Do not play it period. It was our 6th choice. Fairways not cut greens at about a 5 speed rough very high to the point of losing golf balls. If they cared a real embarrassment to this community. So glad I didn;t have guests playing this piece of junk. One of the nines we played had been closed for a week! What did they do? Just tired of it all. Makes my decision to leave much easier. OK you Kool-Aid drinkers I'm ready for all the excuses.

I love The Villages. They seem to so many things so well. The pools are great, rec centers spotless. cart paths and roads maintained. beautification with flowers everywhere. When it comes to golf, they seem to have no idea what they are doing. Courses for the most part are poorly constructed, poorly maintained and poorly managed. The I find that the golf courses are used as flood plains when ponds get too high.

The conditions and overall quality of the courses in The Villages simply do not justify the prices being asked. But as long as they are making money things will not change.

This is hard for me to understand from a community that makes FREE GOLF the cornerstone of its marketing.

You mean like golf courses all over the country?

I played Hacienda Hills on Sep 18--Palms to Lakes. My only complaint given the Covid and the amount of rain we have received was the slowness of the greens. So many fairways were too wet to mow or have golf carts on so Palms was mostly cart path or rough only. While the rough is long, it is rough, not fairway. Missing the fairway should be penalized.

Is it common for golf courses to be used to hold overflow water? Thought this was unusual how it was done here?

Home in NC is stilted. Behind each section of homes is a dry area sloped around 10 feet. As the water flows under house, collects in the new pond.
During last few hurricanes, after ponds filled, the excess went to the golf course. Anything near the barrier island is mandatory evac zone. That is a sheriff at your door, with a five minute leave order, and they wait.
By the time drones are up and running the courses are very wet, and retention ponds are full, and at most rear stilts. It’s an event every time there is a major storm

I really don't have an excuse for anyone's decision to leave. But, it does seem to me that once the decision is made, it would be followed by a period of "I no longer feel the need to complain because I realize that I am in control of my situation.".

Drainage systems are design to a certain "design storm". Unavoidably, design storm criteria are exceeded by storms with some degree of regularity. Any drainage engineer worth his/her salt wants to have some way to accommodate those storms that exceed design levels. If there is a golf course nearby, it's almost a no-brainer...lots of open space that will be able to absorb excess runoff relatively easily with minimal damage. And of course this is far more desirable than letting it flood other nearby developed areas.

No problem with flood plain use. It's why Bellglade and Evans Praire are closed again. My issue is after. When these courses reopen one would think they would be in good condition because of lack of play. If history is any example they will reopen as a mediocre public course. Rain,too much not enough, heat too hot too cold, play too much not enough. As for the rough yes there should be a penalty but for many of us it is much too severe. We arte just not as strong as we used to be. And withall the other "mowing" they do keeping it a reasonable length should not be an issue.

I also played it and fully agree. I’ve played public municipal courses in far better shape. Just horrible conditions independent of all the rain.

Conditions
 

I agree to a point. For the prices we pay, sometimes I think the courses could be a little better.

I have had numerous friends who have moved on to other parts of Florida from The Villages for this very reason. Most every year it is the same thing. In winter you think your hitting the ball a mile and you are as there is no grass on the fairways. An ambassador once told me TV is the only place you can play golf where you get tighter lies from the rough than you do on the fairways. In summer the courses have a tendency to get very wet and the greens are always slow. Always wondered why they almost never roll the greens. This is not hard to do. Then in the end it is very expensive even when you have a priority membership. If you take the cost per round and the fact that you are using your own golf cart, it is not cheap. Many of my friends, including myself play outside in the winter as the conditions are better and the cost is less. Ten years ago it was not as bad. They use to overseed for winter conditions but they stopped doing this. They said it was not good for the courses. Let’s face it, it’s all about the money. They need to hire professional greens keepers who know something about golf course management but this will never happen as they have a captive audience and every tee time is full. So, and I hate this expression, “It is what it is”

The way to get their attention is ----NO one make T-Times at bad courses......NO ONE !!!

It's all about $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

OK here comes the excuses it’s called excessive amount of rain all courses are struggling to stay open many have cartpath only couple are totally shut down. Some villagers have the ability to drive through every wet area and of course tear up the sod.
I for one am grateful to be playing golf so many parts of the country are unable to play!

I must not be picky or I'm not playing the same courses you folks are. I haven't played Hacienda in about 10 days but it wasn't in bad shape then. As far as other courses, I find them very well kept and playable. I'm sure it is tough to maintain courses and maybe they are over priced, but I love all the courses we have here and enjoy playing them.

I too played Hacienda last week and was disappointed in the condition. The roughs were wet and deep, fairways were threadbare and the greens deathly slow. Played Havana on Thursday (Kenya/Hemingway) and was astounded that either one of these nines were open for play, especially not being cart path only the entire 18 holes. On some holes, it was nearly impossible to retrieve your golf ball from the middle of the fairway due to muck 4"-6" deep. There were ruts from cart and mower tracks everywhere. Do the course superintendents and course managers not realize how much damage they are doing to these courses? If they are that wet, the course should be closed!

We played Hacienda yesterday (Sunday), and the greens on a stimpmeter were about a 1. When I said something to the ambassador about the greens being super slow, his response was they don't cut the greens on Sundays but they are cut Monday thru Saturday. When I look at the overall condition of this course, it makes me think they're letting it go downhill so no one will want to play it. Then Developer says no one is playing the course so we'll just develop it to more apartments or homes.:shocked:

Not to be critical but I don’t believe the ambassador provided correct info. I play multiple “champion”courses and there is no way every course super is cutting greens six days per week. Perplexing to me when it comes to condition of greens, there is a wide degree of conditions from course to course. I believe that a few courses get to much play which adversely affects quality of putting surface. Where I previously resides in SC the course I belonged to closed the course for six days once each quarter to refresh the greens and perform needed maintenance on the fairways. This activity was scheduled and all members knew in advance. No one complained because when the course reopened, conditions were excellent. Don’t understand why that’s not done here on a regular basis/schedule

Played Kenya today at Havana.. same story, same sad ending.... lost balls, some of the yellow tee boxes not even marked, had to create our own... "rough" doesn't begin to cover the roughs... everything was pretty much ROUGH!

What should be done when one complains "the rough was wet"? Doesn't that happen when it rains?

Kenya is a disaster.

Course conditions have deteriorated in the 10 years I have been in TV. Sometimes it's reasonable due to weather. But what irks me is when there are cart path only holes and wet areas when they obviously haven't paid attention to sprinkler use and virtually flooded an area that didn't need it. Also when they keep mowing the rough when there is little grass.

Stop, Stop, Please bring your Kool-aid with you when playing golf in the villages.

Had a great time. Shot better than my handicap.
 

Gee, I played Hacienda Hills yesterday (9/21/20) with my usual pals and had a great time. I hit a lot of good shots, the weather was pleasant, birdies were made, birdie juice consumed and two of the guys in our group had "personal best" nines on the Palms course.

Don't worry, soon to be a parking lot anyway.

we played the course over on Rolling Acres behind the "Fort Knox" storage facility the other day....it's a pretty tight course, but it was in great shape given all the rain

my disappointment with that course is that I often lose a stroke on the hole with the windmill

Hacienda in rotten condition ... No point in maintaining a new building site !!

That was very well
 

said

Wow
 

200,00 have died of Covid 19, 100-'2 have had their homes burned, more have lost them to floods, and all you can complain about is "long grass on a golf course" Shame on you

Perhaps we can all agree that The Villages could do better when it comes to maintaining the golf courses. Especially the championship courses could be maintained better because we pay a “premium” to play. Frankly due to health and age I do not “pay to play” as much as some but I’ve noticed continued price increases and mediocre maintenance the last fourteen years. Suffice to say we could do better. I would especially like to see better time frames and less dollars to play nine holes at the championship courses. The fact that most are 27 holes tracks, it would seem fairly easy to attract and accommodate more golfers who would play nine instead of eighteen holes. BTW, the USGA is encouraging nine hole play which accommodates seniors and leaves time for other activities. Just a thought.

Big time agreement here! :)

I’m a 9-holer all the way. I can play 18. I just don’t want to take 5-6 hours at time out of my day for golf...or anything else for that matter. :D

Hacienda conditions
 

We played Hacienda on Wednesday 9/23 mid morning and found it to be in great shape! Rough had been mowed and although it wasn’t tall it was quite thick and punishing, as it should be! Our foursome enjoyed a great round! Will go back.

But...... if the course is well maintained, then I would need a new list of excuses for poor golfing

They probably are trying to reduce rounds so they can use lack of play as an excuse to build more apts

Did you trip over any surveys stakes?

I played on 10/30 and it is okay
 

The issue they are dealing with is excessive water on the course due to our rains. So a few holes we had to stay in the rough. I think this was why one nine was closed when you played. The higher rough is a feature, making the course a little bit harder, not a dog track. The fairways and greens had been cut we saw the grass clippings. The greens are slow, but nearly all the greens in the Villages are slow. There are several reasons a course does this, but it is mainly to make it easier to keep the greens alive on a course that gets lots of play. Yes, it would be nice to have faster greens. But the course is not as bad now as what you experienced.

My wife and I played HH yesterday and we both thought the conditions were very acceptable. The greens were generally in good condition but were on the slower side, especially compared to Tierra Del Sol, which I played a couple days before. The rough seemed a bit longer than usual, but hitting the ball in the rough is supposed to make for a more difficult shot. All in all the conditions were good.

I do feel very sorry for the owners of homes on the 9th fairway on the Oaks Course as well as the homes along the first holes of both the Oaks and Lakes courses. Their homes will, without a doubt, experience a significant decline in value facing a multi story high density apartment complex.

Re-Hacienda Palms - no point in maintaining a building site - Palms is ideal for re-development now the CC has gone !!

I played it as well. Calling it a dog track is being kind.

Every once in awhile I will read your assessments of golf course conditions here. I invite people to read back on your many posts.

I found this one from 2011.

02-04-2011, 11:59 PM
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Played Nancy Lopez today....really good shape

Generally you are not pleased with how the courses are kept.