Horn Rapids Golf Course — Local services in Richland

Many years ago I heard of a new "target golf" style layout in the area west of Richland. I never had the chance to play it, but I had driven by many times. Fast forward to 3 years ago and a relocation to the TriCities. Once I had settled in, I started playing the local courses, looking for a home course. I remembered the good reviews I had heard more than a decade before, and scheduled a round. I was bitterly disappointed. The fairways were mostly brown, with burned out patches. The greens were barely better, with burned areas and even a few bare spots. This combined with the MANY blind shots to make the course much less than enjoyable. Back then, I promised myself I wouldn't play it again unless I heard a lot of good about it. Over the last year or so I had heard that the new owner, Brad Rew, had made a lot of improvements, including improving the irrigation system and improving maintenance equipment. That led to my son and I, along with another friend, booking a tee time to check out the course.

Our initial impression was that something had changed. There were no burned out spots visible from the clubhouse, the practice green looked nice, and the driving ranged looked to be in great shape.

Those impressions carried over to the course. The fairways are in great shape, as are the greens. However, we found lots of mowed spots where the grass had obviously gone too long between mowings, leaving large amounts of grass laying over on the turf, enough in some spots to lose balls. Since so many shots on this course are blind and you cannot see the ball land, this is a real concern, since you can lose your ball on green grass!

Multiple greens had multilevel cuts on the greens, either due to mower decks not being level, or some blades not being as sharp as others on the same mower. The greens were consistently slower than other course in the area, including Columbia Point and Sun Willows, not to mention Wine Valley. I have not played the only comparable course in the area, Canyon Lakes, but when I did play it last, the greens were much quicker. The greens themselves were lush, and held shots well, they were just slow and sometimes uneven.

Fairways were generally well groomed, but we found the same difference in grass level in some fairways as we had on the greens.

The rough presents difficult lies, with most of the rough being sandy, creating difficult rescue shots. In many situations, you are better off playing back to the fairway vs trying to advance the ball, due to sandy lies and difficult natural plant growth.

Greens are nicely contoured, and we found that generally they played with less break than they appeared to have. Many greens have bottle necks, and when the flags are in the bottlenecks, you are far better off playing to center green than trying to find the bottle neck and having your shot rejected by the banking that often surrounds the bottleneck.

Clubhouse is sparse, with minimal equipment options. Don't count on finding your favorite ball in the Proshop. The new restaurant gets great reviews, but we were time constrained so didn't eat there. Clubhouse bathroom was clean.

Overall, we enjoyed our round and we will play again. Time of play was quick, we finished in 3 hours 20 minutes.

Tips for golfers:

1. Buy the course yardage book and pay attention to the descriptions of the holes. It will save you strokes. Lots of landing areas are blind, paying attention to the book will help!
2. Ride, don't walk unless you are in great shape. Greens to tees are long hikes for some holes.
3. Enjoy the views on back holes.
4. Stay out of the rough, and pay attention to best lines, because some of the areas you think are logical landing areas are actually rough.

Things we'd like to see the course improve:

1. Mower decks need to be level and blades sharp.
2. A green whip, to smooth out grass left after mowing greens would be a great idea.
3. Mow the fairway edges and second cuts more often so you aren't leaving grass laying on areas where balls may land and be lost.
4. Keep it up, it...

2.5 stars. The course had pitted and scabbed greens and though the challenge of the layout was somewhat fun it created an environment of unnecessarily difficult terrain. The tee boxes fairways and greens were mostly made up of various islands of moderately manicured grass spread amungst feral scrub brush - barren of trees. The clubhouse was okay. There was a couple of guys working the pro shop that provided good service, yet the grill left something lacking. There was a nice young lady that seemed like she was new and was putting full effort into serving people and an older lady who who seemed to either lack the ability or will to multi-task. I ordered the "green" salad for $5 which I had envisioned as a handful of bagged salad at a very minimum, but to my surprise found that it wasn't green at all. It was a made entirely of; approximately 1/3 head of iceberg lettuce topped with a pile of green and yellow bell peppers and an unsightly heap of unseasoned - store bought croutons. The green portion of this head of lettuce was likely utilized for the burgers as the entire plate was more yellow and white than green. This was less appealing to me as a consumer - not only because it took me over 20 minuets to get this unsightly mess, but also because I'm loosely allergic to bell peppers and on a personal level - don't consider iceberg lettuce to be a "green" variety. I would reserve this title for "mixed greens" such as the bags that you can buy at the grocery store for under $3 - and then portion at least 4 of these salads out of. There was a tournament playing which is great and all - but never once did I see a course martial and the rate of play on some holes left 3 teams backed up at a single hole at times. Likewise there wasn't a beverage cart serving the course which made for a long hot day. Over all we had fun and the course had potential. Maybe it was too early in the season? But I felt like with how the climate is in the area that the course at a minimum should had been in better shape. The greens really needed to be ground and reset in my opinion - or at very least a heavy discount to play the...

First review I've ever written....and unfortunately it's not a good one. This course came highly recommended several years ago so maybe at one time this was a great course....not anymore. As soon as we pulled in the parking lot we noticed the overgrown weeds and general dumpiness. As we walked to the proshop, the building looked terrible, chipping and pealing paint, weeds galore, damage to the stuco finish, etc...The driving range, while hitting off of grass, was pretty much dirt and divots as either they were incredibly busy that day or they hadn't moved the hitting area in some time. Moving to the course, it was full of dandelions, the tee boxes had little to no grass, the fairway grass was almost as bad. As much dirt as grass. The course is filled with blind shots, targetted hitting areas and is narrow. With the exception of one hole, there were no markings to identify where you should hit to....we were left with our best guess as to where to hit. Overall a miserable golf experience....luckily it was a beautiful day so we made the best of it. As we finished my wife said, if we ever meet golfers we don't like we should tell them to play here. Save your money and to to any of the other courses in the Tri-Cities.....all of them are way better than...