Rancho San Joaquin Golf Course

Greens are in great condition. Fairways are not bad at all. Don’t listen to the reviews that are crying about non-pristine conditions. This is a muni that’s finally figured it out. Pace of play was great for a Sunday.

Fun layout. One of the best kept public courses I’ve played in Orange County. Very fun greens. I will definitely be coming back!

Pace of play was very slow and the course was not well maintained, except for the greens. We left after 9 holes. Not much opportunity for reasonalbe golf in this area so it get lots of play.

I encountered average to below average conditions, with about 4 kinds of grass on the wet fairways- when there was grass. Kind of a disappointment, as I was expecting the course to be better considering it was located in nice Irvine, Ca. Anyway, we played "Winter Rules", cleaned the mud off, and so that wasn't so bad. The rough was short, but spotty with a lot of bare and sloshy lies. Not their fault- SoCal had rain the night before we played on Christmas Day. Anyway, a below average, but not horrendous track. I shot around my handicap because there were a lot of fairly short holes and I was having a decent day from the tees and chipping well. The tough part was the greens. Receptive to approaches, but bumpy, undulating and at least 4 holes were actually located on the top of mounds. My brother-in-law and I both had 6 foot putts on one green from a foot apart and his broke left while mine broke right. One time I had an uphill 40-footer, the ball broke left and downhill from the hole and my next putt was from 20 feet away going back uphill. OK- bad putt speed, maybe. But the next one broke 6 feet right when it got within a foot of the hole. Another green I had a 3-foot putt and playing a full 6 inches of break it still turned so hard downhill I was left with another 6-foot comeback. These were NOT fast greens, either! Just medium. That wasn't even the end- there was one hole we all walked away from because if you couldn't make the 7-footer it would just roll right back to your feet with each miss. Pure insanity...

HOWEVER... take the putting away and you've got a pretty decent layout, with a few slopes, ponds, doglegs and mild elevation changes to change scenery and keep your interest. I never felt like I played the same hole twice or got bored. The two bunkers I hit out of were both ideal. Luckily I had lies away from the jerks who don't rake (hey, it's a muni!). Tee boxes were mostly bare, but level. Lost a ball that landed within 10 feet of one green (!) and my BIL lost one that he topped from the tee box into the fairway (!?). Strange...

Oh well. Bottom line, if they put the holes in reasonable spots it's an OK muni to go to and whack the ball around at. In fairness, my BIL warned me about the putting ahead of time- so now you know, too.

It was a Saturday afternoon. Very slow play. Waited on every hole...sometimes there were 8 people waiting on a hole in front of us as we approached to tee off. No one was making sure things were kept moving. Hard to get in any kind of rhythm when things are that slow. We quit after the 14th hole.

Fairways are a little bare in some spots. Greens are in good shape and are challenging. I would play it again.

Course in fairly good shape for this time of year. Pace of play pretty slow for midweek

Only better than the course was the professional staff that took care of us. Could not do enough to help get us started, Jim at hole one, great on course conditions and general play.