A private course with very little bang for your buck.
I would have thought that the country club would have a nice, manicured, robust golf course, but no. It's definitely one of the older golf clubs in the Coachella Valley and at the time, it was simply designed for members, not players. That's fine, but it doesn't have many challenges.
There are a few holes on the back nine that border the Santa Rosa mountains that are a little challenging since the greens break severely away from the mountains and make them hard to read. But apart from that, most of the holes are very short and fairly easy.
The practice area is fairly nice, large driving range, but I didn't see a short game area. The putting green was OK, but a little slow, granted it was Summer. The club house is large and very nice (from the outside) and the Pro Shop is well stocked and large.
The club has more of a casual private club feel than an elegant club feel, which is not good or bad, I'm just saying.
One of the things that I really didn't like, and I've mentioned it in other posts with similar features on their courses, is that there's a wash that runs through the course and the designers have integrated it into the layout. Tahquitz Creek is the other course that I've played with this type of design, but the Cove wash is so much deeper than Tahquitz Creek that you cannot easily enter since the walls are very steep.
Number 10 and 18 run through the wash, and in my opinion, are rinky-dink. 18 is a par-5 where the entire fairway is at the bottom of the wash. If you are luck enough, there is a cart path that runs down the length of it on the left side of the fairway (wash), and if you hit that a few times, you could end up just a 100 yards from the green on your drive.
I was hoping for a little more of a challenge with this course, but I kind of understand why it is what it is, since it's one of the first clubs that was built long ago.
If you are looking for a challenging round, you don't have to seek out a member to play this course. Try the Indian Wells Resort courses instead.
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