Oyster Bay Golf Links‎ — Attraction in Sunset Beach

Would not recommend

Beautiful course, very cool alligators but the man organizing tee times was extremely rude to us. On the 17th hole when we went to tee off there were alligators on the green so we went up and took our pictures and then skipped ahead to the 18th hole and played on giving the wild life their respected space. We then circled back after 18 to get the chance to play the 17th hole that we missed out on, this beautiful par 3 island green. We drove around and no more gators. As we were setting up to tee off he came ripping up screaming at us and as we tried to explain the situation that we missed out on the hole he drove off in a huff.

We decided it wasn’t worth trying to play the hole so we drove back to the club house where he continued to rip our heads off. Even after we explained the situation he responded with “I am here to run a business and make money, you guys were taking too long to begin with.” Which for the record there was no one behind us and we had been maintaining pace of play, the only thing that slowed us up was a member at the golf course came and asked if he could join in so our twosome turned into a group of three and he was the one chatting and slowing us up.

I’m not sure how it is normally done around here but where I’m from that kind of lack of customer service and general indecency would definitely not fly. We spent a lot of money at the course today and tipped the staff exceptionally well - he had no business ripping our heads off like that. If he truly has an issue with us playing a hole that we didn’t get to play, then he should have spoken to us respectfully and calmly and it would have been a different situation. We will definitely NOT be back and will not be recommending this course to any of our future...

Rudest Rangers Ever! Played on Oct 13, 2018 with a 9:48 and 9:53 (?) tee time with a small group and my 83 yr old father who has diabetes and is limited because of his health. Asked the pro if we could take him a little further to the ball as long as we exercised common sense and discretion. On the very last hole we parked the cart approximately 10' from the cart path on a very hard and dry path of packed dirt (no water nor grass and very hard soil). The ranger came speeding up and yelled, "2, 7, and 9! Do those numbers mean anything to you?" Before we could explain to him what we were doing he yelled again to stay on the cart path and sped off. Now bear in mind, we all are avid golfers as we always repair our ball marks, divots, and other people's as well so we know our way around a golf course. If for one second we thought we were destroying any part of the golf course we wouldn't have driven there. Another ranger came up to us and told us we needed to pick up the pace. This was ridiculous because not only did we have to wait on every hole to hit our tee shots but we had to wait to hit EVERY shot as well. He needed to go to the group who was "leading" the pack and tell them to move faster, not the groups in the middle.

There's a thing called common courtesy and manners and their rangers definitely need to work on that. It's a shame because the cart guys were great as was the pro inside and the waitress, but the two rangers made for a very unpleasant outing. We are coming back down in a few weeks with a group of 48 golfers and we have already scratched Oyster bay off our list as one of the courses to play based on these...

There are parts of the experience here that are great, parts that are ok and a couple of "meh"s.

The staff was great.

The vista are gorgeous. Several holes are adjacent to marshland. Lots of beautiful water feature. Tons of old trees.

The fairways and rough, as far as I could tell, are Bermuda grass. This means that for us, today (mid October), everything was beautifully green. I didn't lose any balls in the rough (thankfully), but hitting out of it when the ball is partially submerged is challenging.

The greens were good - smooth and mostly true. There was some variation in the speed - a could of holes were surprisingly slow, and a couple were surprisingly fast.

The sand traps were in great shape, except for one, which had a lot of erosion. I'm ok with that - it's low season.

The price was very good. I paid $43 on a Sunday at 2pm, cart included. (I'm pretty sure they don't allow walkers - at least one bridge said you can't walk on it.)

Now, here come the gripes.

The cart paths were pretty terrible. Lots of pot holes; lots of root invasions; several places where there was standing water (and tracks going around these spots).

Several holes had sand for the rough - it seemed like the just couldn't get the grass to take.

Several tee boxes were beaten up.

Overall, I enjoyed the course and the round I played. If you are in the area, it is not a bad choice (and there are dozens of...