Chateau Elan Winery & Resort

No Starter

Confusing start time

Angry and mad player due to frost delay and start time

For a nice neighborhood course, terrible experience with staff and people

We were on pace for a 5.5 hour round.

Only played 13 holes in just over 4 hours. Painfully slow. nobody monitoring course all day. Then around 5 they put a message out, Return Carts????

Wow they love rubbing salt into a sore.

I find the course layout okay, though the lack of a flat lie in a fairway can be frustrating. Generally light on staff, and encountered really annoying technology (GPS) glitches with the carts.

Greens were in pretty decent shape. It rained two days ago and the course was still very wet so it was cart path only. We were in the very middle of the cart path and our carts would shut off (this happened at least 40 times and we would have to reverse back down the path that we were already on). I recommend driving the entire path in reverse so you don’t eat the windshield.

Addressed to the Pro Shop: get Ray Charles to re-adjust the gps system to actually make the cart fee worth it

I now know why it’s name The Woodlands…I get that’s it’s fall/winter golf, but the amount of leaves on the course was ridiculous. Combine in the cart locking on the cart path multiple times, with having to call the pro shop once to get it unlocked, we stopped after 9 holes. Greens were excellent, pace of play was good and pro shop staff are always great.

It would be good to install signage instructing

golfers to fix their ball marks on the greens . If the greens were not full of holes I would give a five star for greens an if the Tees were a little bit better would be nice as well. Overall not a bad course for practicing your short game. A little high on price.

The original golf course at this pleasant winery/resort northeast of Atlanta has the bulbous shaping and grandiose bunkering that many of its contemporaries share, but a tendency towards generous playing corridors makes it a very serviceable resort golf course, as do its good conditioning and its welcoming people. The course switches between hilly and flat river-bottom holes, with the last third featuring the its most memorable holes, including the awkward down-then-up par-4 17th before a long, stately par-4 finisher.

My first impression of the Woodlands was about as negative as I have had towards any golf course. It was the 2008 Division III National Championships, and in short, it thrashed me. Narrow fairways, lots of bunkers and firm, unforgiving greens conspired to beat me down in the first round of the tournament.

But my return trip 16 years later was a different story. In recent years the resort has toned down the bunkering, providing a bit more room to play while managing tree encroachment along the corridors well. It’s still my second-favorite of the two 18s at Chateau Elan, but I actually like it now.