De Anza Country Club

This course is in pristine condition! Beautiful setting and awesome weather in the desert.

This is a very nice track. Conditioning was excellent but the greens were difficult. Tough to get a ball to hold. Seems I was over the green on my approach all day.You do not want to putt from above the hole because it is tough to lag on the downslope. Three putts were the norm. According to the Pro, this has been a members only club until recently. Sounds like the membership is old and shrinking so hence the public play.Wherever you are on this course you hear the constant cries of coyotes in the nearby desert that reminds you that you are in the back country. I shall return to de Anza CC with different game plan for those pesky greens.

I play this course every year as my father-in-law pays the $750 month dues plus the $250 quarter minimum food service requirement. This course is flat as a pool table, bunkers have a 12 inch lip at worst, the women putt out of them. Each green is sloped back to front 5 to 10 degrees to help stop the ball on the rock hard greens. The greens are very slippery at about 14 stimp meter. The staff will attach a small green tab on your putter to measure gimmies at 18 inches as side hill 24 inch putts will break 10 inches. Conditioning is great, but I do not know for how much longer as the super senior membership is dying off fast, my father-in-law is a youngster at 83 yo. Staff and service is top rate, not top notch, but they do take very good care of you. I really don't know how they can compete with Tom Fazio designed Rams Hill, the course is much more challenging and has LARGE elevation changes on most holes, accurate yardages to front, middle, and back of each green. I will report on this course again in three years as it has not changed in the 15 years I have been playing it. If you get invited, and play the course, send to Japan for wound synthetic balata balls; you lose a little yardage over solid core balls, and you can hook or slice them off the planet if you do not make square contact, but the increased spin into the greens will help you keep the ball below the hole leaving a uphill putt, but watch your angles versus the fall line, still huge breakers if you are not close to the fall line.