Joachim Golf Course

Sooooo happy that golfing weather is back… Saturday was sunny and 80 degrees… stinkin’ perfect. We’ll say that I gave the one star to the weather, even though Joachim had nothing to do with that (and if they did it would have been a hurricane thrown on top of an F5 tornado). This place was pretty much a disaster. I’ve been a few times over the years, dating back about 8 years, and each time the decision to go was not my choice… more of a ‘we’re going here, you should join us’ sort of thing. Going Saturday, it had been about 6 years since my last trip to Joachim, so I was hopeful in that they may have improved things since then. Nope… they didn’t…same old dry, arid desert of a golf course. Seriously, there is some poor money management going on at this place, because it is virtually the same price as Spencer T. Olin (in Alton) but ¹⁄₁₆ of what that place is quality-​wise. The money is certainly not going towards groundskeeping or upkeep of the course. Hole 1 housed one of the worst greens I’ve ever seen… whole chunks of grass were just gone. My birdie putt hit one of those patches just before the hole and took a sharp left (needless to say, I took the birdie). Hole 4’s fairway had whole patches of dirt… in the fairway… dirt. It was actually BETTER to hit in the rough at this place than in the fairway because the grass was actually green… check that, there was actually grass in the roughs. I also saw sprinklers, and some of them were spraying, but those greens were rock hard… ridiculously rock hard. It’s extrememely frustrating when you hit a great shot, only to see it bounce off of the stupid hard greens, or to see it just roll right off. Greens can be ‘firm’ but greens should not be made of concrete. Arghhhh, I could go on, but I won’t, it’s just no good. The most frustrating part is that they are scalping people with the price…$ 20 greens fees for 18 holes on a weekend, alright that’s fine… but then another $ 10 to rent a cart!!! What? All told, $ 32 for 18 w/cart…which would be a steal at a lot of places but here was a complete rip-​off. I don’t know if they just think they can charge that much because they seem to be the only option for those that live down there, but it’s a joke. It makes me kind of angry that I paid that much, but again, I had no say in the matter. The only saving grace (s) was that I beat the other 3 that I was playing with and that on hole number 3 I took a seven iron shot right into the side of a metal barn… my competitive nature was at least satisfied.