Water's Edge Golf Club

Its been 30 degrees in Chicago for weeks. Thursday it was near 60. It was nice to play golf in December in Chicago. Thanks to the staff at Waters Edge for opening the course to the public in the middle of winter. The course offers a large driving range and practice area. The price is fair. The staff is friendly. The place was booked solid and kept pace nicely. They even brought in a cart girl. All around great day

The course was in decent shape for the end of the season. Pace was a little slow.

Besides the fact our tee time was delayed by 1 hour because of frost delay, the round was stellar. We were the first group off so I can’t speak to pace of play but for being so late in the season I expected the course to be in rougher shape. Minus the chill in the air you could have told me it was July and I would have believed you. Greens were fast and hole placements created a good set of challenges. My only critique is the staff could be a bit warmer. They were a bit stressed about the frost delay, and they passed there distress on to me as customer. Half our foursome was a bit pressed for time due to the delay in tee time and they didn’t seem to have empathy for our situation. They also couldn’t confirm if we would be allowed to use carts and if we couldn’t would they be refunded. Expectation management and reassuring customers are not their strong suit.

Played the course after a couple days of rain. To my surprise the course was not as wet as we thought it would be. Greens were very fast but true. Playing there again next week.

Water's Edge is usually a decent play during the week. Unfortunately our day was ruined by two lopes. When asked when their tee time when they arrived at the practice green the response was "we don't have one but we're next on the tee." We didn't bother to respond back to them....we just let them head to the first tee and waited for them at the putting green even though our tee time was absolutely next. Two foursomes of millennials music blaring with beers already cracked were directly in front of them. These two managed to finally play through these two groups by the 11th hole and really took their sweet time as they did so. The millennials did have the decency/acumen to wait for our foursome to play through them on the 11th tee. We thought the slow play nightmare was over.....but these two senior jacks actually played even slower on purpose and held us up.....to the point of backing up the other two other slow playing 4 somes we had played through!!!.......and this with a completely empty 7 holes in front of them!! A 440 round that easily should have been 330/345. I hope someday I get paired up with these two guys. I'll definitely recognize one of them. I'll treat them as poorly as they treated the golf course as well as all others playing the course. Sometimes you just have back luck but I know in my heart the golfing gods will never ever be kind to these two guys. See my other reviews of this course below......this day the greens were pretty speedy but pockmarked with tons of no repaired ball marks and also old poorly repaired ball marks. A couple of greens had obvious club/divot damage from other entitled HOLES who play here. Really a shame.

Chose to play here because it had an available morning tee time for a Sunday. A challenging course because of its length. But IMHO the course conditions were not on par with the price (no pun intended).

Greens and tee boxes a little worn. Driving range tee boxes were in great shape. Great value to a pretty nice course.

When we checked in to confirm our tee time and get our carts, we asked the staff member if there would be food and drinks available at the turn. The staff member made a generic statement that "There is a facility at the 9th hole and a beer cart will be coming thru". He was being a bit squirrely when we asked and wouldn't make eye contact. Sure enough, when we finished the 9th hole, there was a building with a huge "BEER" sign but it was locked and not staffed. Also, a beverage cart never made the rounds. No food, snacks, beer and especially water, as it was a hot day. The guy who checked us in was a bald faced liar. Just say you're understaffed. Decent course, but not being managed well.

Waters Edge is in okay shape however it does suffer from an extreme amount of play. The majority of golfers don't even attempt taking care of the course. Freshly cut greens and we still had to fix quite a number of ball marks from previous days of play. Divots in the fairways - some so big and deep that they could be replaced. Sand bottles on both sides of the cart and patently obvious most golfers don't even lift a finger to fill divots that can't be replaced. Lucky us - our two some had four very nice drives in the fairway finish in non sanded divots. Went through four bottles of sand during the round and probably could have used four more.....and I don't make much of a divot if any at all.

Greens were smoothly rolling just fine - just tad slower than most greens I've played over the past couple of months. Very hit and miss sand traps....mainly miss as several trap hard pan/sand never machine raked up by the grounds crew. Traps do have rakes. Water boxes are still not operational. Tee box conditions all over the place....some really should be closed down to allow them to be repaired and grow back in. Some tees were moved forward or back a tee boxes from scorecard yardages....plus of a few tee boxes played today were crowned so getting level teeing area presented some issue.

Nice range facilities if you warm up and but again my pet peeve - a large practice green with sticks/no holes. Given the very early hour - we teed off at 615am so we had a well paced round of slightly under 3 hours. When the tee sheet fills up the course easily becomes 4 hours plus plus....and in the past we've experienced 5 hour plus rounds several weekend afternoons.

Didn't ask but it appears the halfway house is open later in the day - you can access it from behind the 5th tee box, after 6 on your way to 7th tee as well as after 9..... Make sure when you check in the pro-shop to ask if the halfway house or a beverage cart is roving....and if they are not you have to stock up/fill your water Yeti....the course doesn't return to the clubhouse until the19th hole! Shower in the locker room is closed.

Clubhouse guys and the ranger/cart guy were very welcoming and desired us to have great experience. We did. Recommend play 3.7 stars $35/$40 value.

The only issue we had, and it is kind of out of their control, was the leaves were falling off the trees early and the course was covered with them. This made it very difficult to find your ball if you were slightly off the fairway and sometimes even on the fairway.

Good course. Fairways need some TLC around the greens and they need a marshal maintaining pace of play.