If you feel like a round of golf should occassionally not include constant refrainment from wrapping one’s club around the nearest tree or dumping your golf bag into the nearest lake, Glendale Golf Course is for you.
Playing Glendale is not the taxing mind game that courses such as Mountain Dell, Wingpointe and the Homestead are, but that doesn’t mean it’s any less fun to play. Glendale sits near the bottom of the Salt Lake Valley, which means it is one of only a few public courses in Salt Lake City that is flat.
The results are level playing surfaces and greens that break the way they look. This, combined with the fact that Glendale rewards good shots and simulanteously doesn’t penalize bad shots, makes for tyically good playing conditions.
That being said, Glendale isn’t going to challenge the pants off of any scratch golfers. There are a few times that Glendale puts a premium on shot-making — particularly on the approach shot at No. 3 and the drives on No. 16 and No. 18 — but overall, it is not impossible to recover from shots that go astray.
Golfers of all ability levels will find No. 6 and No. 18 to be most challenging. The length of these two par-4s, combined with the demanding accuracy and distance required off the tee, make bogey a decent score on these holes. With varying degrees of exception, the rest of the Glendale course is fairly tame. The par-5 No. 1, No. 9, No. 13 and No. 16 all play under 540 yards from the black tees, making birdies, and even eagles, a possibility for nearly the entire playing-ability spectrum.
One of the quirks of playing Glendale is the yardage. Glendale has more sprinkler heads marked for yardage than any other public course in Salt Lake City. There is no other course that fibs on its distance. At least one-fourth of the holes at Glendale list the longest tees as having the capability of playing at least 10 yards longer than possible. The prime example of this is on the par-3 No. 17, where the tee box is backed up to within two yards of the canal that splits Glendale off from holes No. 14 through No. 16.
Another problem at Glendale is the lack of hole rotation and golfers that have yet to learn course etiquette. In other words, too many golfers don’t know how to fix their ball marks, making putting across Glendale’s promising greens as bumpy as the drive along Utah’s pothole-infested roads on the way to the course.
But these fibs and potholes pale when considering Glendales fantastic practice facilities.
Golfers can accurately gauge distance and direction on Glendale’s wide-open driving range. There are no sissy mats to hit off of, either, as Glendale lets golfers dirty up their clubs on the natural grass surface of the range. The putting green at Glendale is also top-notch. The green offers a flat putting surface on which golfers can gain a true roll of their stroke. There is also plenty of chipping areas around the green for golfers looking for valuable work on their short games.
Glendale might not give most golfers their money’s worth in terms of stroke count, but one of Salt Lake City’s best public courses does offer an excellent four-hour golfing experience in the middle of town.