Crystal Springs Golf Course

It's tough to beat the views at this course, which lies just off of one of the most scenic stretches of highway in the Bay Area, Interstate 280 on the San Francisco Peninsula. The location, alongside Lower Crystal Springs Reservoir, in rugged terrain at the base of the Santa Cruz Mountains, dictates a course with lots of elevation change, and uneven lies – and therein lies the challenge.

Be prepared for shots to elevated greens, or greens that lie well below the tee box or fairway, and shots with the ball below or above your feet. Walking this course is a workout – I have walked it once and ridden once – and would definitely ride if I were to play it again, due to the climbs (or drops) from tee or fairway to green. Fairways are often rather narrow, and it takes a bit of course knowledge to know where to (try and…) lay the ball off the tee to take advantage of, or avoid being punished by, the slant.

Condition of the fairways and greens is, in my experience, uniformly excellent, and even with recently punched greens I can't say anything negative about the putting surfaces.

I can recommend that any golfer in the Bay Area, or visiting the Bay Area, give this course a try.

Course overall in good shape - foggy the entire rounding but i will go again.

Great to play on a Tuesday. Less people playing and the pace of play was good. Our foursome teed off at 12:45 and was able to finish in 4 hours 10 minutes. Course is challenging because the fairway is sloping either to the right or to the left in so many instances resulting in lots of uneven lies.g

I have driven by this course numerous times and finally decided to give it a try. When I arrived the course was packed. I check in with the staff and they stay they will call my group when we are up for our tee time at 12:37. We end up finally teeing off at 1:20 with all the delays on the first tee. We see a marshall thinking he will help get the groups going and he is more interesting in giving golf lessons then keeping the pace of play up. When asked if this is normal he said yes they space out tee times 7 min apart. I asked if they were always so backed up and he said go ahead write an email to management. This course has a great layout but my experience with nearly 6 hour round and poor experience with the staff I will not be going back.

We were scheduled to tee off at 11:04 but dd not tee off until after 11:30. Then it took 5 1/ 2 hours to play 18. Often there were two foursome waiting at the tee when we completed the hole ahead. For the entire front nine. Back nine the pace picked up somewhat. So do not play here on a weekend.

Played here today waited approximately 20 minutes per hole per shot. Never saw one marshal come out to speed things along. Horrible time management in a course I usually love playing. Get it together.

Good day, good greens. Better pace than usual made for a great day.

I really enjoyed this course. It’s quite picturesque but does have a lot of narrow holes! Gotta be on your game! Thinking about playing here again today as a matter of fact.

Unfortunately the drought (and likely revenues) have really taken a toll on Crystal Springs. I really enjoyed playing here in college in the 80's but things are a bit rough now.

First the good. This track has always had a nice layout and that, of course remains. Winding back and forth against the hillside above Crystal Springs reservoir, the views are nice and the routing is good.

There is also abundant wildlife along the way including deer that, if anything, are too friendly. A guy on a tee box ahead of me had to literally shoo away a deer so he could play.

The course is very affordable for bay area golf and the pro-shop staff was fantastic and went out of their way to be helpful.

Now the not so good. The tee boxes, fairways and greens were all in really rough shape, including bare spots. Everything was hard and fast (and seemingly very much lacking in water). It was playable, but really only just so.

Magnifying the issue, the pace of play (to be fair this was a late Saturday afternoon tee time) was horribly slow to that point that nearing 3 hours in I left after the 9th hole (I almost *never* walk off a golf course). This was after two groups insisted that we played through.

My hope is that I caught Crystal Springs at it's worst and things will be better next time in in the bay area, the course I recall from my youth was really quite nice. With this in mind I'll withhold a commitment on whether I'll play there again.

first nice hole is in a good pace , but last nine hole is very slow. Total time to play 18 holes is 4.5 hours.

Cart Broke on 1st 9 holes. Delay to replace it. Since it was late didn't played back 9 hole. No refund was given.

It's memorial day weekend , so the pace is very slow. It took almost 6 hours to finish the 18 holes. The green is a little bit tricky and not in perfect condition. Be patient and just enjoy!