Van Zandt Country Club — Restaurant in Canton

The fairways and greens were well kept and very nice compared to other courses around east Texas, the clubhouse had good food and affordable drinks which made for a good start to the day, however after eating lunch after hole 9. We noticed a sign that said “to speed up play thru you can call the clubhouse and get food for pick up”. There wasn’t a mandatory part on the sign so we stopped and ate just as we do at the other 6 courses we play in east Texas. The food did take about half an hour for us to get but was enjoyable. After starting on the back 9, we were approached by a man saying that they are going to catch us and that stopping and eating was not allowed at this course, even though it is a public course. After words were exchanged we kept playing and trying to make it thru the back 9. We did have two novice players which slowed us down. After a couple more holes we had another person ride up to us as we were heading to hole 17 saying that we need to get out of the way or hurry up because they had a group of 8-10 teams behind us and we’re waiting on us. After stating that we were trying as much as possible he then kept pushing the issue, right after that he stated that he was the owner and that he would have us escorted off the property because we should be playing faster, when an employee showed up, we had a long conversation with him. He stated that no course “out of the 20” he has worked at allows players to stop and eat lunch. After a 10 minute delay we went back to finishing up the last two holes while having golf balls driven at us. I don’t know if that is the reason there weren’t a ton of people out there for a beautiful Saturday, but getting over the small town politics and bullying would really help this place to thrive. Harassment while trying to play golf is a bit much, especially by men who look to be retired, but the course staff not even acknowledging that we were not doing anything wrong and blaming us is rude and unnecessary. Besides the last 30 minutes of our experience there it was very enjoyable. But we will not be coming back to spend our money...

Hard to give one of our favorite little East Texas courses an average review especially when it’s always a blast to drive out to Canton but ..

A few things really provoked this one: first, when someone books a Tee Time you need to let them know if the course has some issues - just V Cut the greens a few weeks back and it still impacts putting, and they were inconsistent speedwise; a few greens with bare spots that are sanded including a Temporary Green that didn’t look like it had been mowed in a week - it was worthless trying to putt that one; some Tee Boxes were simply sand. And sand traps, not sure they have been worked in a week or two.

Probably more disappointing than all that, no beverage cart anywhere to be found - not sure what happened but at the turn there seemed to be more than a few ladies in the grill.

Toss in a foursome in front of us that was a slow as slow gets - guys were mid/late 20’s and in absolutely no hurry but never saw a Marshall.

Let people know when booking that the course has this or that going on, and in the heat of our Texas summer, for goodness sakes let groups know when checking in that you won’t have a beverage cart on the course so they can stock up!

This all said, it’s a great little course and people have always been friendly and fun. We will be back, just hope things have been cleaned up or that this was...

If I could leave zero stars, I would.

I played this course once before about a year ago and it was in OK shape. Nothing special, but priced accordingly so it was fine.

Just played here today and it’s a complete train wreck. For starters, every single green had deep stripes from some kind of machinery they’ve run over the top of them. I’m not sure if it has something to do with a weird aeration process, or if someone just screwed up and drug a tractor across them, but we literally couldn’t putt. We had to make a two putt max rule after the first hole… it was literally that bad.

On top of that, the tee boxes were in awful shape and bunkers were a total joke. Maybe they get a slight pass on the bunkers due to a lot of recent rain, but I’ve never seen greens in this shape.

The cherry on top is they charged us nearly $60 a person on a Monday… just an absolute joke. These guys should feel bad about robbing whatever patron is dumb enough to play this place at that...