King's Walk Golf Course Review

A few months ago a friend and I played some evening golf at King's Walk Golf Course in Grand Forks North Dakota.  Now this was my first time playing a 4 star course so I had some high hopes.  First we got a pretty cheap rate.  First we got twilight rates then on top of it we got student discounts.  It came to around $20 a person.  It seemed pretty reasonable to me and also my friend.  We had to make a reservation which we expected considering it is considered the best course open to the public in town.  The clubhouse was nice but the guy doing reservations gave us a little bit of attitude like we were not welcomed there.  We got to the first tee and one thing I noticed was the course was in amazing shape.  Even better than other course I have been to so far.  We started golfing and I was playing horrible.  I couldn't hit a straight shot with a driver to save my life again!  I need to work on it once I can afford to golf again.  Anyway we were enjoying ourselves putting and such.

There were a lot of members on the course that day with golf carts going at a much faster rate than us.  We let them play though every time.  It usually ended up as us visiting with them anyway due to the fact the course was so busy.  This is where the enjoyment of the course ended though.  After letting two or so groups catch up to us and play through the groups behind us started getting ruder and ruder.  We would still let the faster players play through politely but would not get any thanks or anything like that.  We were in no hurry to finish the course like they were we just wanted to enjoy ourselves.  Again there was a huge clog up on the course so letting people play though did not get them any further in front of us, because we were always waiting behind them at the next hole waiting for the people in front of them to finish.  We got up to play the 8th hold after waiting for the group ahead of us to get out of driving range a visibly drunk guy came screaming up on his golf cart across multiple fairways.  He screamed at us saying "You fuckers are holding everyone up!"  We calmly explained to him and showed him we must wait there are people in front of us.  He then not so kindly expressed to us that we should get off the course anyway since we were not members nor good at golf.  Then drove off.  My friend and I did not enjoy this to much.  A few minutes later that guy and his friend on the cart went blowing buy us just to cut in front of us.  I'm sure he passed quite a few golfers and have no idea which hole he went on.  By this point my friend and I were convinced this was not the place for use.  We finished up the front 9 went into the clubhouse and ate some food.  The food was very good by the way and the price was just a little bit pricey in our opinions.  We were still upset about what had happened to us and decided this course was not for use at all.

We came to the conclusion that the higher priced the courses get the more assholes the course gets.  It seemed like mostly everyone was out having a good time on the cheaper courses and not much would upset them.  King's walk was not like that at all.  Yes there were nice people, but in the end it seemed like those people were few and far between.  I'm still upset when I think how I was treated to this day.  My friend and I both decided never again would we golf at King's Walk.

In conclusion the golf course was in amazing shape and the food in the clubhouse was very good, but I cannot recommend this course due to the attitude of many of the golfers (mostly members) on the course.  People like that can easily ruin a good day of golf, and when your paying more you expect to have more fun.  This is sad, because it is such a beautiful course.

Here are some pictures of the day.  By the way I decided to try out a Zazzle account and put some of the pictures on there in case some one actually wants to buy the pictures I took.  You can view the Zazzles site here.  I don't know how long I will stay with Zazzle though, because they are more frustrating than anything.
Anyway onto the pictures...

The Clubhouse

View of the fountain from the first hole

First Hole fairway

more of the first hole fairway

a nice bridge

Golfer teeing off

Some golfers gettin ready to tee off while we walk back to the clubhouse the course is so pretty I wish people there were nicer

Ducks and what they call a lake

the fountain on the "lake"

View from the clubhouse

Sunset over the clubhouse

King's Walk Golf Course TaylorMade Demo Day

Last week I got to experience another Demo day at King's Walk Golf course.  This time TaylorMade was the company that was there.  It was windy that day with the winds at around 23 miles per hour straight down the driving range helping make all your shots go longer (go figure a windy day in North Dakota).

The first club I tried was the Burner 2.0 6 iron.  The distance seemed O.K. with the ball landing just past the 150 yard flag.  The club did not seem as easy to hit though as the Callaway and Ping clubs I hit.  The TaylorMade iron seemed smaller.  I couldn't compare it side by side with anything but it seemed smaller.  The one thing I really didn't like about the iron is the vibration.  When you hit the ball the vibration was annoying and didn't make it feel like a solid hit.  After hitting about 50 balls or so I really couldn't take the vibration anymore and put the club down and grabbed a Burner 2.0 pitching wedge.
The pitching wedge was not anything to special in my opinion it felt just like the 6 iron.  It was difficult to hit compared to other clubs I hit and had the same annoying vibration when you hit the ball.  Even compared to my cheap Golden Bear clubs the Burner irons were not enjoyable to to hit.  In the defense of the Burner irons though, they are apparently longer than the irons from any other company according to the TaylorMade website.  I cannot vouch for that though due to the wind conditions at the driving range.

The final club I tried out was a 10.5 degree Burner Superfast 2.0 regular flex driver.  Let me tell you this driver is light.  It almost feels like your just holding a graphite shaft.  With this driver being so light you can really whip it around fast.  Distance on the driver is pretty decent.  I was easily blasting the ball over the 250 yard flag especially with the help of the wind.  I can't compare it to the other driver's I hit on distance again thanks to the wind, but the ball went pretty far with this driver.  I had a few issues with the driver though.  The first one was the feel.  Since the driver was so light I really could not feel the club head when I swung.  Like I stated before it just felt like you were swinging the shaft.  Also when you hit the ball with the driver the sound and feel is not that satisfying either.  The ball flies far, but you don't really feel like you killed it.  For a lot of people this doesn't matter as long as the ball goes far, but if i was paying over $300 for just a driver I would like it to feel like it is somewhat worth the money spent every time you hit it.  The final and bit thing for me was the club seemed very inconsistent on where the ball was going.  When I'm not swinging well my ball starts slicing to the left (remember left handed).  When I was hitting this club the balls were going every which way left, right even every once in a while straight.  I hit the irons straight, but not this driver.  I can only assume it is because this driver is not very forgiving compared to the other ones I have hit.  I was pretty disappointed I didn't get to hit the almighty R11 driver.  This is because by the time I got done with the Burner driver the TaylorMade rep was packing stuff up.  Hopefully sometime this summer I will get a chance to try the driver out at another demo day.

In conclusion, I guess don't believe the white driver hype until you try the club out yourself first.  To me it seems like TaylorMade just like every other club company tries to promote distance in their clubs.  In TaylorMade's case though it seems to be at the cost of feel from what I've experienced.  I still like the Razr Hawk driver best and the Ping irons.  These TaylorMade clubs may be for you, but at this moment they are not for me.  With that I will end you with a quality Callaway ad and some pictures I took of the demo day.

The almighty white driver

TaylorMade's demo day setup

Win a FREE two week membership at King's Walk Golf Course in Grand Forks

King's Walk in Grand Forks is giving away a free two week membership!  The entry deadline is April 22 and the membership will be valid from April 23- May 6.  King's Walk is an Arnold Palmer Signature Course run by the Grand Forks Park District.  It is rated 4 stars by Golf Digest.  If this isn't inexpensive golf I don't know what is.  I suggest anyone in the Grand Forks area should enter.  Click on the link below to enter.
Win a FREE two week membership to King's Walk!!!