Bear Trace at Harrison Bay (TN Golf Trail) — Local services in Tennessee

I have been golfing at Harrison Bay multiple times over the past 5 years. I think it is a beautiful course. The course is associated with the Harrison Bay State Park near Chattanooga, TN. It is in a natural, park-like setting with views of Chickamauga Lake. One of the holes has a bald eagle nest right beside the green. There is a small pond that used to have beavers - one year I saw several baby beavers swimming while chipping up to one of the greens. I have never been golfing there when I did not see white-tailed deer on the course. The course has wide fairways. There are no houses on the course - so it feels very private, and natural. I have played there twice this year - the fairways were in good shape, and the greens in excellent condition. It is usually not overly crowded. There is a nice driving range area and a chipping/putting green that are in good condition. The course superintendent is Robin Boyer who is super-helpful, friendly, and also offers top-quality golf lessons at a very reasonable price. This is one of the best public courses at which I have had a chance to play. I would highly recommend this course if you are looking for a good course near...

I LOVE this golf course. Amazing views, great greens, reasonably priced on weekdays. However, what I'm not a fan of, is being forced to play with other groups. There are only 3 golf courses in all of Chattanooga that I'm aware of (concord, valleybrook, montlake) that never make you play with strangers. I always get told it's because they want to maintain a good "pace of play". I'm a fast golfer. Last time I tried playing with randoms, for 9 holes it took almost 3 HOURS, when it would normally take me about an hour and 15 if I was alone. I don't want to be paired up with 3 randoms who might play very slowly and what happens if your personality doesn't mesh with other people? I know most people don't like playing with random people anyway. Growing up, I played at a course where if you were slow, you had to pull over and make the faster players through and we never had any issues. Why can't golf courses go back to this? You would in theory make more money this way as well. This place would definitely have my business more if they would stop pairing people...

I'm giving this course 2 stars because of the beautiful views of the lake and the scenery on the course. But if I was rating the shape of the course I would have to give them a 1 star bc I couldn't give them a 0. We brought 8 golfers down from knoxville today. And the course was in awful shape. Definitely was not worth the 65$ to play. More like a 35$ course. Greens weren't mowed this morning, greens were in rough shape all the way around also Slow, bumpy, bare some greens had areas of new sod like they had lost their greens a hit. Fairways were in decent shape. If you were off the fairway it was bare, rocky, dirt, mud ( you name it). Approaches were thin and bare. Newly soded areas in the approaches were poorly done. Tee boxes were thin, bare might as well been hitting from sand bunkers off the tees on all par 3's. Bunkers had no defined edges. Just all around awful experience and...