Carlton Oaks Lodge & Country Club

Range balls are 3 yrs old. Fairways, tee boxes and bunkers are terrible. Greens are ok. Cart service is ELITE.

Read a lot of negative reviews when I was booking my tee time, but took the chance anyways because I enjoy playing here from time to time.

It was just fine for the price. Not nearly as bad as I was expecting after reading the terrible reviews…. Fairways, tee boxes and greens were all in well playable shape. Greens were punched a few weeks ago and seem to be healing well.

Sure the rough wasn’t pretty but move your ball to a piece of grass and move on.

Booked the 12:54 hot deal and finished at 4:10.

Great pace, friendly staff and great bar.

If you can find a deal it’s well worth a play.

Always a challenging course.

Played this course with a few of my buddies and was in complete awe of how awful this course is. We decided to try it because the pictures show an actually well maintained course maybe 4 years. Looks like the owners packed up ship and left this place to die. Fairways look like WW1 trench warfare and tee boxes had sprinklers going off when we were about to tee off. I wouldn’t be as frustrated as I am, but this place charged us a WHOPPING $60. I wouldn’t even let them pay me $60 to play this atrocious excuse of a “golf club”. Better yet, maybe they should fund the chiropractor I am going to need after driving their carts with zero shocks. Do better. This is a joke.

The greens are sandy and bumpy, really slow and hard to read. Harder than reading fast greens. Pretty frustrating. The tee boxes are all dead grass, looked like they’re putting some maintenance to them, fairways were sand in most areas, hard to even find preferred lies within 10 ft of where your ball lands on the fairway. If you pay for a deal, $25-$30 it’s worth the practice round I guess, but wouldn’t pay more than that currently. Just watched a video of the course from 4 years ago and man I miss the way it use to be maintained. Wish to see it come back to life soon

This is easily the worst course I’ve played on. Hitting a fairway means you are hitting off dirt. Tee boxes are absolutely horrible as well. Nothing good about this course except the staff

This course has been in decline for years, but it has reached a new low. The current ownership has checked out and obviously doesn’t care at all about maintaining the course. The fairways are just uneven patches of burned grass, dirt, some actual grass and weeds. The greens are more sand than grass and the tee boxes are almost unrecognizable. The whole course is basically a wasteland and gives off a real post-apocalyptic vibe. I’m really not sure how this place is getting enough business to stay open. The parking lot was almost empty. Anybody who pays full price to play here is simply flushing their money down the toilet. Even playing on a heavily discounted tee time feels like a rip off. The staff was nice, but that isn’t reason enough to play here. The sad part is this course could be nice if somebody was willing to maintain it.

Dry and lots of dirt with lots of some kind of animal holes

7am tee time still took 5 hours. Course is in horrible condition all around. Go anywhere else

Had to play my annual, “Does it still suck at Carlton Oaks” round.

The answer is yes. Patchy slow greens with different grass types on the same green. Poor sand consistency. Doesn’t seem like they water the grass in the fairways much. Litter all over the course- probably due to lack of trash cans. No ball washers. Sad tee boxes. Divots went un-repaired all over. Probably due to the frustration of the course conditions. It is pretty much just dirt. This course used to be really nice. Owner should sell it, he is only interested in developing the land around it to make money.

The cart girl was nice and kept us accommodated. Maybe I’ll try again next year.

Worst course I’ve played in San Diego over 20 dollars. Green’s are terrible, fairway is a dirt patch, there is no rough … just more dirt. Don’t go here. I’d give this 0 starts if that was an option.

The layout is cool and could be a good course if they did ANY maintenance over the last decade.

The course played quickly. I was playing as a single and didn't catch the single in front of me until the 11th hole. Course could use more water but the greens were in great shape.

This used to be such a gem of a public course in San Diego. The Pete Dye design once showed greatness, but lack of care and investment in the ownership has really let this place go down the toilet. Dirt patches and gopher holes. Fire ants all over the greens and uneven tee boxes. Simply put - it’s a disaster.

I’m trying my best to be informative and put this nicely… but ownership of Carlton Oaks… PLEASE figure your $@!+ out and reinvest in the property. The layout of the course is amazing and has potential to be the best public course in greater San Diego county, but the lack of care (aka lack of water and maintenance) has destroyed this once-great golf course.

I will not be back until something changes… which is a real bummer because it’s close to home and was always one of my favorite courses to play growing up.