| rev:text
| - This golf course is like a mirage in the desert.
The 1.5-hour drive from Chandler is not a fun trip. Phoenix traffic is always a mess then you
turn onto highway 74, the road that time forgot. It has not changed in 100 years and is still 2 lanes.
The golf course entrance has a desolate winding route with no man made buildings around.
Some temporary structures appear and so do the cart guys. They are helpful.
The man in the Pro Shop isn't a Pro, he works for Farmers' Insurance full-time.
Andy from Wisconsin is friendly and rags about how fast the greens are and how tough the course is.
The journey to the #1 tee and practice area is about 1.5 miles down a lonely road.
The starter is an affable guy from Illinois who also bragged about how fast their greens were
and how tough the course was. The practice greens had just been top dressed and were covered with sand. I asked our starter if the greens on the course were like this and he replied;
"no, they are much better."
Hole #1 is a short par four, and an easy par, but the greens were covered with sand.
I had been deceived. I should have left here immediately but after the long drive, what the hey.
I discovered that there are more flies on Quintero than on any of the eight other courses
we've played.
Also, on our first four holes, we had more maintenance personnel interference than all the other courses combined.
The "GPS" here is rudimentary. There is a small six-inch screen located below and right of the steering wheel with distance to the pin virtually illegible. This is woefully inadequate in comparison to other prime courses.
Tees are not marked 90% of the time. This will cause a big delay if you are a first-time visitor
because not all tee boxes are in play and many are hidden. All other courses that we've played clearly mark each tee box.
The key in playing this course is to stripe a straight drive in the fairway. On par three holes
hitting the green sets you up nice for birdie.
The second shot on par fours is the most important here. Many times an extra club is required
because the greens are located behind punitive bunkers.
Sadly, the top-dressed greens took away a lot of the legendary speed but they all seemed to run true as in straight. Do not give away the hole here.
Rees Jones was channeling a mountain goat on quite a few of these holes. He has designed
a tiered level of tee boxes going up the hillside. The back tees hit from the top and have beautiful vistas. When you wind down to the copper and jade tees, you could find some gnarly tee shots with rocks and vegetation as distractions.
Because of forced carries and tricky, uneven side hill lies, this course is not recommended for high handicap golfers.
This course has had a long history of overbooking/overcrowding and horrendous slow play during the high season.
On a 100 degree day in early May, it took over 4.5 hours to play and we only encountered a ranger once. He was heading to the group in front to sped them up.
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)