Par 3 at Indian Tree Golf Club

I got there just as my tee time was announced and the staff were super helpful in getting me onto the course. An enjoyable course with just enough water to keep players alert and wide-open fairways and little rough to invite opportunities on every hole.

The par threes in particular make this course fun!

We had a good round. Wish everyone played faster though

I tried to detail the litany of failures this course regular suffers, but golfnow appears to have deemed the review to unfit for your consumption.

Here's a quick highlight reel:

- Greens look like someone shot them up with a machine gun from a helicopter. No one fixes divots here. All grounds were exceedingly squishy from over-watering.

- Staff are purely clueless. 4-months into COVID guidelines, they still don't know how to check you in, and get you going. No marshal. No beverage cart. A man putting on the practice green alone was whined to about social distancing while a 50-person photo was being taken in front of the marquee after an hour-long party was held on the patio. The key difference: the party generated revenue.

- Tons of high school kids are employed doing nothing but driving carts in circles including across the course without regard for golfers or where they might be hitting shots. Give each a divot tool and some purpose with their life!

- 5 hour round. Again - no marshal.

- Teaching pro is comically spastic. I've watched him teach lessons and he stresses me out even from a safe distance. If you want golf lessons spewed to you at an auctioneer's pace by a man with an apparently coke-addled gait, this is the place for you!

- Free yardage book! . . . with minimal details on how the course plays.

I'm not sure where to start. If you don't like: bad greens, slow play, marshy turf, clueless staff, bad COVID-safety protocols, or greedy practices, I'm pretty confident you won't like Indian Tree.

The course was in miserable shape. Maybe they're watering it every hour to keep the greens alive?? I've never seen such soggy greens and fairways in Colorado - Arvada Water is making good money here! Fixing divots is a foreign concept to players of this course. The pitch marks make the greens roll as smooth as freshly aerated and sanded muni greens (with the wide punch, not the little slits).

The course has the resources to employee half of the local high school kids, but they don't seem to do anything more than joyride golf carts. One pack of children drove straight in front of our tee shots and when warned that they were in the way, they just froze and watched from a very dangerous area. The starter had no idea of what she was doing - the 4-month old COVID-adjusted check-in process was a complete mystery to her. She took more names than she could remember and then had to walk each name back to the clubhouse to pay. It took her three visits to the clubhouse to simply swipe my card and hand me a receipt.

On the course, you're fending for yourself. No beverage cart (fine by me, but maybe not you), and absolutely no marshals anywhere. The last time I played this course, I asked a marshal to handle the group that had snuck onto the 7th tee in front of us. His response "oh, I'd never ask them to get out of the way." So if you're retired and want free golf for "working" at a golf course, this is the place for you! If you have any interest in completing your round in less than 5 hours, there's a lot of nice courses nearby.

Most pathetically, the course used COVID as an excuse to shutdown the free pitching area. It's now marked as "lessons only" despite lessons regularly being taught from the few range stalls available to the public. Make sure you show up an extra 15 minutes early to account for waiting in line for a range stall to free up.

Final note: one of their teaching pros appears to be the most spastic, nut job I've ever seen give a lesson. His pace and cadence looked coke-addled as he frantically spewed useless tips at the poor beginner golfer I watched him instruct. It stressed me out just watching him teach another person. I can't imagine how he would ruin a golf swing given the opportunity.

Nice free, minimally informative yardage book though!

Well kept, good history, unique items on course reflecting the name, very clean. Staff one of the most helpful I have encountered recently, a big plus, from the clubhouse to the cart people.