Coeur d’Alene Resort (Blues)
66355 yards – 70.1 Rating – 122 Slope – 87 Score
Day 47; June 6th, 2017
The Coeur d’Alene Resort Golf Course is known world-wide for its floating green; and, I don’t mean to take anything away from that hole when I say this, but it was not even in my top three favorite holes on the course. This track is immaculate from the first tee box to the final green and while, as a resort course, it plays a little easier (70.1/122 from the blues) than some, it has plenty of bite (and juniper) for wayward shots.
The planned cover shot for my book comes from a par three at CDA (#6)… not the floating green. My favorite par three that I’ve played (anywhere) is at CDA (#5)… also not the floating green (this might be my favorite hole, regardless of par, if it were a bit longer). None of this is to disparage the island green. There is a special feeling that I can’t really explain about teeing up a ball that has exactly one safe harbor, and then you need a boat (aptly named “Putter”) to get to it when you do land on the green. Just a heads up, don’t plan on “tin cupping” your way onto the 14th… they do have a mandatory limit to tee shots and a drop area on the island for pace of play reasons. As an aside, I’m not sure I’ve ever wanted to play the forward tee’s as much as on 14… with the exception of the bridge walk-way to access it, you are hitting island to island as the tee box stands by itself some 20 yards out into the lake.
My favorite hole was actually the par 5 11th with its long somewhat narrow fairway being escorted to the hole by a creek the entire length on the left. The approach requires clearing the creek to a green nestled into a hill. It’s just a great golf hole and, bottom line, Coeur d’Alene is a great course to play.
Coeur d’Alene is probably the first course I’ve visited where the combo tees are likely the perfect place for me to play as they stretch out the 5’s and 3’s enough to provide more of a challenge but keep the 4’s within reasonable shooting range (for me on a decent day). Some of the gold par 4’s (479/482) are just a bit much for my caliber of golfer to have a reasonable chance at par. I thought the bunkers were well placed and in excellent condition and they even had the requisite tree-in-the-middle-of-a-fairway hole to meet my “courses I love to play” criteria. The course mixes angles, distances, and elevation to provide a pretty complete golf experience and you will likely get to use all of your clubs and most of the shots in your bag throughout the round.
The staff experience at Coeur d’Alene begins with your (required) caddie, mine was terrific and really added to the experience. This was the second caddie I played with on this trip (3rd in my life) and he provided much more of the experience I was (perhaps unrealistically) expecting in the past. By the turn he was in tune with my game and was correctly speculating on clubs I would select. On 16 he corrected my club choice (I was looking at a 7i he pointed out that with the layout near the green my 8i with a little roll would be a better choice) and I wound up about 12 feet from the cup (we won’t discuss if I converted the birdie op or not, not even a great caddie can fix everything).
The rest of the folks I met at the course were great as well. The free sports massage is worth saving a little time for, and the driving range – hitting balls into the lake – is a unique experience (my home course has a pond for a driving range so I’m used to hitting into water, but that is just not the same as hitting into a mountain lake).
The price-point for the resort course is a little higher than you might be used to paying for golf, but I don’t know if I’ve ever felt that an expensive round of golf was more “worth it.” Clearly the money is being spent on the course as the conditioning is really as close to perfect as you can get on a golf course (and I’m saying this having played a couple days after it hosted a very large tournament).
This is the only course on my trip I’ve played twice, and I’ll probably play it again, so I can enthusiastically say I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a great round of resort golf.
