Hacienda Hills 9/3/21
 

Just finished playing Lakes-Oaks. Should have stayed in bed.

The fairway grass is already sparse and patchy, some areas are burned out----looks something like our winter "rough". However, go 2 inches off the fairway and you might lose your ball in 3 inch Bermuda (in places), other places are already hardpan.

The greens , frankly, $ucked. Running a solid 5 on the stimpmeter or less:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl: No consistency, almost impossible to hit a 30 footer hard enough to get it to the hole, bumpy, irregular and boasting 17 "lumpy donuts"

The sand traps looked OK, I managed to avoid all of them so I'm not sure what they were like.

And the Coup de gras was the practice green; it looked like Dr. Zeuss's worst nightmare. It prompted my playing partner to quip: "They should have demolished the practice green and left the clubhouse standing":1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

And to top it off, the two groups ahead of us finished 26 minutes behind pace (to which the "ambassador" stated---"it's busy today":1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:)

Do yourself a favor and stay away!


Stay Away!

You didn't happen to find a pocket knife off the 9th green of the Lakes? :pray:

Thank God I didn't---I probably would have used it to cut my wrists:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

I'm glad you didn't then! that knife is a sharp mother!

I played them the day before and agree with every bit of that. The fairways look like they have not had any water in months and the rough just off of them is so high you almost have to take an unplayable if you can even find your ball. Had a lie on Lakes # 6 15 feet from the hole (which is normally a great approach shot) inches off the fairway and the rough was so high we almost gave up looking for it.

Shhhhhh, don’t tell anyone about the poor conditions. We are building a bunch of villas where the pro shop used to be and want to get the maximum golf course premium for them.

Thank you for this post on conditions at Hacienda. I was considering playing there today because so many other champ courses have been aerated recently. Glad I decided to play exec instead!

As always, getting them all prepped up for the snowbirds to destroy.
After snowbirds leave, a lot of GCs are close for repairs. Same old story every year :boxing2:

Hacienda Hills Golf
 

I played Palms to the Lakes on Friday and the greens were terrible. You couldn't hit the ball hard enough to get to the hole. The fairways are barren and the roughs were tall enough to hide golf balls. Lots of spots that need fill. and grass. Pathetic condition. One of the guys said that's because the $ is all going south. He's probably right. I live on the Palms and I know they try, but it really needs a lot more than a try...

BTW some of the traps were a muddy mess. Some guy came by a ran around in the traps at about 90 mph in his little tractor and piled up the sand and never bothered to rake it down or work on the sides.

If you dont play it there will be more t times open for us

HOW SAD with everything going on in the world the only heartbreak, and wrist slashing problem is a poor quality golf course. We wont look for sympathy for the continual deaths or hospitalization, of Floridian ( by the Governor) from you. How sad.

Enjoy!

It must take the intellect of a tree stump to take the disingenuous wrist slashing quip literally

And while I didn't think it was possible, that post turned a golf course condition thread into a POLITICAL COVID statement. Some people must have a one track "mind"

I wish that I could feel that pain, but I come from a different set of opinions. TV Land golf courses contribute to fertilizer runoff, which has polluted many small lakes - and may (?) be why the fish from these lakes can not be eaten as they have too much mercury in them. I am NOT trying to start an argument with any particular person. I would just like to put some of my cards (really opinions) on the table for consideration by the mass intelligence of the group forum. More cards (opinions)........golf courses have cut down many trees that were previously sending oxygen into the atmosphere and absorbing carbon dioxide. Trees and shrubs absorb smoke and other internal combustion engine pollutants - preventing to a degree the hole in the ozone layer. So, golf courses and other factors have caused global warming (or climate change to be euphemistic about it). It is a problem that is not talked about enough. I don't expect TV Landers to suddenly become tree huggers, but I thought that it would be nice for golfers to know that others disagree with their game. Pickleball takes up less trees! And does NOT require gasoline motorized vehicles to further pollute the world. There were once small indoor golf ranges with screens to sense the depth and accuracy of a drive or iron shot. That was 50 years ago. Today with A.I. and robotics I would imagine that technology in combination with actual fairways and putting greens could produce a better golfing experience (after all that BAD physical experience is what this very thread is about) - while being kinder to Mother EARTH. Thank you, sincerely!

You can't be serious, and personally I couldn't care less if you "disagree" with a game played for thousands of years by hundreds of millions. Indoor golf screens with robotics????? No comment.

But maybe you should check out these facts:

Quick facts about golf courses
Presented by the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America
1. A properly repaired ball mark heals completely in 2-3 days, while an unrepaired
ball mark takes 15-20 days to heal properly.
2. A typical 18-hole golf course covers approximately 125 - 150 acres of land. The
total landmass of golf courses in the United States equals about 1/2 the state of
Connecticut.
3. A typical 18-hole golf course produces enough oxygen to support 4,000 to 7,000
people.
4. Golf courses nationwide combine to filter 13 million tons of dust from the air
every year.

So our 693 holes of golf produce enough O2 for 269,500 people----perhaps we should start exporting it

I have noticed that the general sport of golf, like polo, and horse racing is participated in by a class (level) of society that tends to be LESS empathetic than say basketball and volleyball players. Certainly, there are empathetic golfers and non-empathetic volleyball players, but as a general class, those generalities would stand. We all have our tribes and that blind allegiance to our tribes is a MAIN cause of those more important, real-life problems that you refer to. The whole US stands on a knifes edge between empathy and tribal violent behaviors. Good luck! Let us hope that the meek will really inherit the earth!

My main motive is a CIVIL discussion. Sports are a big part of all the world's societies. I picked out an individual sport - golf to illustrate that for EVERY sport there will be ADHERENTS and DETRACTORS. Golf, boxing, or whatever? I liked Mohammed Ali, but in later life, I felt that boxing as a PRO sport was too violent and too injurious to the participants. I also feel that football NEEDS better helmets.

Now to your #2 point......the US landmass that is USEABLE is decreasing as we see to the coastline and fire-prone interior as we speak (current events). What will happen when we have 600 million people in the US? incidentally, if you could have lobbied for limited growth in US population to about 250 million people, then I would probably NOT be even mentioning global warming and I would NOT have any problems with golf courses. And when it is thought about the screen A.I. golf idea is a GREAT compromise. I just INVITE golfers and techies to work on it.

#3.......Yes, agreed! Grass is a plant that produces oxygen and captures CO2, but NEVER as much as the forest that a golf course replaced! WE are trading information, lovely!

#4........Yes agreed! But, the dust stopped was probably stopped 1,000 times more by the original forest. And a forest does NOT need to be fertilized! Thus, saving the mining of phosphates and the dollar costs and air pollution costs of the mining equipment's internal combustion engines.

There is nothing wrong with a golfer LOVING their sport. There is just a downside to any sport and virtually any activity. I would call upon golfers to call for more trees to be planted along their fairways. And maybe to form a club that plants young saplings in state and national forests in areas where a fire had burned through. Also, to encourage laws to NOT allow private dwellings in state and federal forests! Thank you, sincerely!

Thank you! Can't argue with much of that (other than AI golf, which is really ridiculous when you think about it. Actually, that kind of already exists at top golf and similar facilities. Unfortunately, it's not even close to being the same. Sort of like flag football---I doubt you would get much support for replacing the NFL with flag football). Trees are good----

Tree and Rain Forest Facts


Trees renew our air supply by absorbing carbon dioxide and producing oxygen.
The amount of oxygen produced by an acre of trees per year equals the amount consumed by 18 people annually. One tree produces nearly 260 pounds of oxygen each year.
One acre of trees removes up to 2.6 tons of carbon dioxide each year.

So, 125-150 acre golf course producing O2 for 4-7,000 people equals between 27 and 56 people/acre, or 1.5-3x a "forest". So, cut more trees and build more golf courses!!!!!

Considering that many of the major polluting nations have next to no golf courses, that opinion is a non runner.

"Someone" has no idea how many trees are on any given golf course!
Real golfers know :1rotfl:

We know that the top 2 polluting countries are the US and China. We were # 1, then China captured that dubious honor. If the pollution caused by the US and China were zero, there would probably be no global warming and therefore, no BIG fires in Ca. and no Big hurricanes. How to DETERMINE the effect of Golf courses on that big picture? ........China is the US's main trading partner. We effectively OUTSOURCE our pollution for manufacturing to China, because their government does NOT bother to care about its people or the air quality of the rest of the world. But, we are driving China in that direction. The Chinese tend to play table tennis because of their large population and less rural and suburban landmass than the US. We have the LUXURY of being able to play GOLF. Due to the LEVERAGE of the golf club and swing, a golfer does NOT have to be especially strong or have great athletic footwork. They do need SKILL, practice, and a VERY resource-heavy and LARGE area to play in - as compared to a basketball court, football field (which has multiple uses), hockey ice rink (multiple uses), table tennis table, pickleball court, and etc. Older, less athletic people can participate successfully in GOLF - the club leverage has an equalizing effect.

Exactly how much the environmental cost of golf courses would be hard to quantify and to calculate. It would take a scientific paper to spell it all out. Mining of phosphate fertilizers would be a big factor - talk about wind-blown dust! A big factor would be exhaust gases from internal combustion engines of both mining equipment and the bizzions of golf cars with limited pollution control devices on their exhaust pipes! Golf course fertilizer runoff into US water systems would be another LARGE cost to air and water quality. Any sport has costs and costs to the environment, but Golf might have the LARGEST costs to the SMALLEST number of people as a ratio. I had heard that golf was DECREASING in popularity with the younger upcoming generations. If true, this current TV Land generation may (?) be the last generation that NEEDS golf courses? Mybe the forest will return and the earth can heal itself??????>?

The problem is the original premise---THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS GLOBAL WARMING CAUSED BY MANKIND. IT IS A MYTH PERPETUATED BY THOSE WITH SOME KIND OF POLITICAL AGENDA AND ONE OF THE BIGGEST CON JOBS IN HUMAN HISTORY. I've posted the paleoclimatology behind the cyclical changes in Earth's history several times. Short version---WE ARE IN AN ICE AGE, AND HAVE BEEN IN THIS ONE FOR ABOUT 4 MILLION YEARS. During this time, there are periods of glaciation and periods of interglacial thaws. We are currently in a thaw which started about 17,000 years ago and we will continue to have "global warming" for about another 15,000 years. Then we will start cooling again on the way to another period of glaciation. So, take NYC for example. In about 5-10,000 years it will be under 100-200 feet of water. 30,000 years later it will be under 2 miles of ice. These cycles are about 60,000 years in length and have been going on for 4 million years. And Guess what----IT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH SUV'S, CARBON FOOTPRINTS, BURNING COAL IN CHINA AND INDIA----NOTHING. But merrily, merrily the MSM, the Hollyweird crowd, those left of center continue to repeat this myth, and are willing to spend 100 trillion dollars over the next 50 years to "fight it" Cervantes would be proud of how far we have come in tilting at windmills.

Now, I can see the response already----most scientists agree that we are causing "global warming"----the same scientists that are dependent on government stipends and grants to survive. Try looking at those that are independent of the government and see what they say.

Oh, no, it's happening again. All I did was to start a thread on the horrible conditions at Hacienda, and now we are debating global warming!!!! I'm going back to watching the Solheim Cup

At least it didn't turn into another covid .....ummm......."discussion"

Someone appears to be a few french fries short of a happy meal : (

I prefer sweet potato fries (cooked in olive oil, of course, NOT animal fat) because I have read health journals that state the overwhelming nutritional benefits of the sweet potato over the "useless calories" white potato. As matter of fact, the ONLY nutritional part of the white potato is the SKINS! Ironic isn't it - since most people peel and then throw away the skins.

I prefer a pre-game breakfast involving sweet potatoes in order to do "carbohydrate loading" before I head out to the GOLF course to play a solid 18 holes. I take some sweet potato fries in my golf car to munch on after about 12 holes in order to keep up my energy level. I also like to eat sweet potato fries after lifting weights or any heavy work exertion. I use GOLF for the mental relaxation (like meditation) and I use good nutrition like sweet potatoes for my energy requirements. Once you go to sweet potatoes you NEVER go back to "yucky, useless white potatoes!

Thanks for the information. And I always liked Cervantes - my man Cervantes!

And thanks for the course condition updates guys. I almost always play either Lopez or Glenview once a week. I live in Piedmont and I can almost roll out of bed and be on the first tee in 5 minutes, whether I breakfast on white or sweet potatoes. Both of these courses have been in very good condition the last few months. (Although they did recently aerate Lopez, which I played today. Even though they were aerated, the putts seemed to roll pretty true, just a little slower.)
I like to play another Champion course during the week and La Hacienda is conveniently located and usually much less crowded that the alternatives such as Palmer or Cane Garden. But based on the reviews here, I'll settle for an Executive course until things look better.

As far the the sideways direction this thread has turned, I can't understand why anyone who hates golf course would live the TV, a place whose success was due to golf. For years TV advertised exclusively in golf magazines and the golf channel. Most of our monthly amenity fee goes to maintaining the golf courses.

Again....if you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with bullsh_t

Its a game! Not a world ending event

I've been looking for studies that show how much CO2 is absorbed by basketball courts/stadiums, but cannot seem to find any?

Oh, Doc
 

I LOVE it........ You better run for cover...... :a040:

Political discussion? (Green advocate?)
 

Please turn this 'bleeding heart' off!

There are a s---load of trees at Hacienda Hills and they probably contribute to the poor quality of this golf course, due to lack of sunlight. Fairways and greens on the Palm 9 and are in much better shape than greens and fairways the Oaks 9 and Lakes 9

Not an expert, but do beleive they need to close it down and install new fairways and greens and use a newer variety of turf grass which is more shade tolerant. When they do this need to selectively remove trees Bet the fairways/greens are the same grasses used when course built.

Lastly no posts about high concentration of weeds. Appears supetintendent has no clue as to what is going on, unless he just does not care.

OMG!!!!! BLASPHEMY!!!!!

Forgive her, for she knows not what she says:1rotfl::1rotfl::1rotfl:

Hacienda
 

I played there tuesday. Putting green was terrible but greens on course were ok, not fast, but not slow like some of the posts mentioned. Fairways were sparse so we played roll them . Not perfect, but have played worst.

You're obviously not a real golfer. It's much more important - than a "world-ending" event. LOL