The Lakes at Laura S. Walker (whites)
6069 yards – 68.9 Rating – 119 Slope – 84 Score
Day 16; May 6th, 2017
Teeing off at 2:00 pm in Georgia can be a rather warm experience, and my afternoon at The Lakes at Laura S Walker state park was no exception; by 2:10 I had a nice sweat going. Fortunately, this really isn’t a bad place to be, if you have to be overheated. With plenty of trees and forested areas, The Lakes does offer some escape from direct sunlight, and some lovely scenery as you make your way around the course.
Relatively flat, this course relies on a lot of turns and strategically placed bunkers for defense. In particular, they are fond of having traps on the inner elbow of their doglegs so any attempt to cut a corner that comes up short will result in sand play on your second shot. Number 12 also uses a large bunker in the center of the fairway to mitigate the relative shortness of the hole.
The Par five 13th is also a good example of the angles and trees used for green protection with your third shot needing to navigate a gap in a stand of trees into a green protected on the left by approaches from the center or left hand side of the fairway and on the right from anything coming from the right. I often ignore pin placement sheets before my rounds, but on this hole it would be a good idea to know the position before beginning in order to maximize your second shot.
There are also… some other hazards to avoid…
The course’s web site mentions alligators as a hazard of play and on this track, this proved to be quite true. We ran into several along the way, two of them “in play” sun bathing along the left hand side of the fairway on the 8th hole. Relatively docile in the afternoon heat, given 20 yards or so of space, they didn’t seem to really pay any attention to use at all (since the course won the 2011 “best place to hook a kid on golf” national aware, I felt comfortable with the staffs comments that the gators don’t pose any real threat as long as you give them a bit of space). There are all sort of critters living around the course, including the largest turtle population I have ever seen. In short there’s no shortage of things to see as you make your way around this course.
The victim of intense heat and not much in the way of rain when I played there, you can still see how nice this course could be with a bit more water. As mentioned above trees are plentiful and the course makes good use of the three ponds scattered across the property. The fairways, in general are fairly generous and you can certainly keep the ball in bounds with average striking; however, be aware that a truly wayward shot is likely gone as the forested areas get pretty thick and a ball hit in there is likely lost.
The staff was exceedingly friendly/welcoming and the pace of play was great (although in the heat of the day the course was fairly sparsely populated). As you might guess by the 6000 yard length and 68.9/119 rating/slope (from the whites where I played, it does stretch to 6600/71.9/122 from the back), it’s not the toughest course you’ll ever play; but, sometimes, it not about the challenge. If I had it to do over again, I’d make sure I got an early morning start time for my round; however, other than that I think The Lakes is well worth you time.
