Links At Spring Church — Local services in Kiskiminetas Township

Note I am not over critical and I always give places a chance and never judge course conditions during the middle of summer when there's little to no rain. First off I will say everyone up there is very nice, I've never had a bad encounter with the staff for the times I've played there. This review starts last year, we played here a few times and the course was rough, the greens were rough, tee boxes were rough, and the bunkers were concrete. I shrugged it off and chalked it up to the heat and the lack of rain we got, I didn't say anything bad or good about it. Fast forward to this late spring, all the courses around are in very nice shape and we've been getting a ton of rain; we booked a tee time for the late morning and I was excited to see how this place was flourishing because it is an enjoyable layout. I'm not happy to say I gave it until about hole 8 before I felt disgusted I was charged $50 to play 18 here; I felt scammed. Despite all the rain and great growing weather the course looked exactly the way it did end of summer last year, patchy rough tee boxes, fairways were scruff with bits debris everywhere and then the greens were in rough shape too, patchy balding spots with bits of debris all over them. It wasn't just one or two holes this was every single hole. Manor valley, Norvelt, Mannitto, 3 lakes, murrysville golf, and many others are the same price or cheaper and are miles better when it comes to conditions. Even Cloverleaf which is a no booking walk on course that sees a ton of traffic daily is in so much better shape for $27. Only reason I'm writing this is because the place has a ton of potential but by far the worst shape of any course I've played in the entire south...

This course definitely has its ups and downs. It can be a great course. It is kept in pretty decent shape for the most part. I went out the for 2 recent outings. 4 man scrambles. It's a shame that the rangers are so pushy during the outings when you pay a decent amount of money to play the course for a great cause. Both times we were playing at a normal pace. 3.5-4 hours. First time we were being pressured by the ranger. Nobody being held up behind us. The group in front was not being pushed by us... no reason for the ranger to come up to us and tell us we need to pick up the pace.

Saturday Aug 28th the 2nd outing we also had a good pace going and again a ranger came up to us 2-3 times pressuring us about (How many holes do you have left? We have another outing. Are you guys almost done?) This was with 2 different groups of guys. I went with. We rushed the last few holes. It was very aggravating. We got back to the Clubhouse and sure enough there were still 5 groups on the course. If I recall correctly there were 27 groups of 4. Absolutely no reason to be doing this. Under normal conditions. I can understand if it's taking 4.5-5 hours to get done and you're holding people up. But we were not.

Maybe a little more staff courtesy. It can go a long way. I will go back as I enjoy golfing, and especially if it's for a good cause. Hopefully this is seen and taken into consideration. I golf almost once a week and this is the only place I've ever had this...

Enjoyed playing The Links at Spring Church for the first time with my two sons. Was very pleased with the condition of the course (especially after the heavy rains we have had the past weeks). Two days earlier I played at one of the city's premier country clubs and to be honest the greens here were in better condition.

Nice to actually see a starter on the course who was friendly and engaging. The clubhouse guys was pleasant as well.

Two issues:

1. We had an extremely long wait to tee off on 18 - very odd. We really had a nice pace of play going throughout the round until we came to 18 where we wait almost 15 minutes to tee off. Strange.

2. There is no water on the course and the vending machines on the course did not work. The halfway house was closed and the pub as out of the way. Please put some water on the course, get a cart girl or make sure the halfway house is open.

One warning - if you are using GPS be warned that the last turn when we should have made a right might be wrong. Our GPS told us to turn left (there is a sign there). I called the course and they said that many GPS systems...