The Sanctuary Golf Course

Jerks in clubhouse. Overpriced on weekends. Chili open in fall good deal but totally filled with drunk cheaters. 5^th hole is stupid – supposed to be this great par 5 but it’s really dumb. Heard the ranger tell one of my buddies once that it’s the 8^th toughest par 5 in northern Illinois. Whatever that means… Avoid at all costs.

Cool name, not much else. Mediocre layout which appears to have used an inexperienced or budget architect, basically a parks dept. course with no frills and nothing that warrants the long drive or the $ 60 green fee. Maybe worth a try for half of that.

Pros are great with kids. Tuesday’s kids days in the summer is awesome.

The starters were great, the «pro-​Lou» was rude and disrespectful. I had a bad experience and addressed it with course management. At first I was impressed by the immediate response from Bob Schulz and seemed to want to look into the concern. Then I did not get a response from him for 2 days and reached out again. He basically wrote back and informed me due to a negative review (which had nothing to do with me), he had no interest in following through with me. It demonstrates he cared more about a reputation than doing the right thing and following up with a customer that was treated poorly by his staff… now it’s a former customer.

Wow, what an experience at The Sanctuary today. Course was under water on the back 9 so we played the front twice. Play was slow… expected, but what wasn’t expected was the way we were treated by Lou the wannabe pro when we started again on #1. We actually started the back 9 on hole #3 as we were asked to do so by one of the starters to keep play moving. He then told us we could play holes #1 and 2 to finish the round. When we were on the 1^st green, Lou approached our group of 3 and basically treated us like criminals asking how we ended up behind the special needs outing and if we had our receipts and did we pay for 18 holes. This guy was COMPLETELY defensive without even giving us a chance to explain ourselves. I pay more in taxes than this guy makes in a year and he accuses me and my friends of playing a hole of golf without paying. Needless to say, we will never give this course another dime of our money based on the way we were treated the last 5 minutes we were there This guy was completely unprofessional.

Really Neat course with a great, friendly staff. New Lenox is kind of a haul from Chicago, but if you’ve got the time to head down there, it’s very much worth it.

One of the best golf courses in South burbs of Chicago. Several holes resemble a links course mixed with some traditional tree-​lined holes. Difficult to score in windy conditions. Plenty of challenges with lateral water on 3 or 4 holes, fescue throughout the course and fairway bunkers on most holes. Beautiful course to spend a few hours with your buddies.

5 ½ hour round on a Sunday. No rangers. Problem easily fixed if they have rangers and tell so many people not to play from the tips with 10+ handicaps. Never seen a course where that’s allowed, and it is allowed there.

Great course but very tough. Lots of tall grass. I am not skilled enough to golf here.

For a beginning golfer, this course is definitely a challenge. Even the more experienced golfers I have played with here have found it tough. The rating and slope seem a little low to me.
The conditions here are excellent. In fact, I was so impressed by them that I couldn’t believe that this is a park district course. It doesn’t have that feel that one associates with many of the other PD courses in the area.
This course challenges you to control every shot, because if you miss the tight fairways, you’re going to be searching through the tall grass forever only to find someone else’s ball where you thought yours was. In fact, if you’ve played here this season, you probably found one of mine: I want it back: P
Why do I give this course such a high rating? I love it. I have a moderate handicap, and I find the challenges here enough to keep me coming back. Also, the $ 27 Wednesday special is great. A tough 18 including cart for under 30 on such a well-​manicured course is a treat. A cautionary note about this, though: book your tee time in advance and as early in the day as you can manage. The later the time, the slower your round will be here, especially on Wednesdays. The starters and rangers do a good job of keeping the pace up, but there’s only so much they can do. People should consider playing up a tee, but I will save that rant for somewhere and someone else.

I am not a golfer but I sortof aspire to be. Sortof.
I took lessons here last year and I am trying again this year only with Lessons for Women which I like even better.
The instructors are super laid back, friendly and encouraging. They are flexible and non judgmental. They even gave us water today.
As great as the lesson and course are, I still suck at golf. But that’s for a different Unilocal review — areas where I need to improve perhaps?

Just thinking about golfing makes the winter more bearable.
It’s a bit more expensive but the staff are great — friendly and helpful.
When the snow melts, check it out.