It may not have been the best day to review a golf course on account of the weather but at the same time, it turned out to be a pretty decent day. However, I no longer trust any weather app after yesterday either. All three of the apps on my phone showed no rain until after 6 pm in Springfield, LA where Carter Plantation is located. They were all wrong.
The start of the day was great. just a little overcast and around 68 degrees. Upon driving into Carter Plantation, the property the golf course looked great. Surprisingly everything was green too. Even when pulling into the parking lot where you can see one of the two practice putting greens, that green looked more like it was June than early March with a deep green color.
Although I didn't pull up to the bag drop the outside staff came to bring me a cart. Since my phone didn't have much of a charge on it, I asked if the USB port was working on the cart he brought me. Unsure, he went out of his way to find me a golf cart he knew the USB port was working properly. It may not seem like a big deal but to me, that is above and beyond. The golf shop staff was also very welcoming as was the grill and beverage cart staff.
Carter Plantation has really good practice facilities. A full double-ended driving range, two practice putting greens, and a short game. The short game area has bunkers and enough area to hit shots up to 50 yards. It is a great way to start a round and get a peak as to what type of conditions you could expect on the golf course.
The golf course itself was not what I was expecting. I thought the green color was possibly from overseed but it was not. It is just coming in naturally and until the first rain shower, everything played like it normally would.
Overall: 3.75 out of 5
Tee Boxes: 3.5 out of 5
The tee boxes were not horrible but they were not what you'd expect either. The par 3 holes were all cut down to a lower height but the rest of the course was inconsistent. If you only hit driver off every par 4 and 5 tee box it wasn't an issue. I had an issue when I hit an iron or 3-wood off some tee boxes. To tee up an iron or fairway wood low enough on a short par 4 the ball would sit down in the grass about halfway. Even when you teed up a driver on a few holes the tee would barely be in the ground to keep the ball above the top of the grass. To be fair though these issues were only on about 4 or 5 holes out of all 18.
Fairways: 3.5 out of 5
The fairways were pretty good. They were not that tight low cut you see most of the year but the ball would still sit up with a really good lie. The areas around the edges of the fairway were longer but I couldn't tell if that was to be a first cut of rough or if they just missed a mowing area. Even those areas were cut at a height between a tight fairway and a first cut of rough. The biggest issue I had with the fairways was the amount of unfilled divots. Some of that is on the golf course not going in and filling them weekly but most of that is on the golfers. Yes there ae many divots that were a few days older or older but there were more fresh divots from that morning than there were old ones. One area off to the right of a green right by the cart path had so many divots it looked like someone was practicing 20-30 shots from that area. I used two full bottles of sand to cover those in. This just made the course look bad in some areas.
Greens: 4.5 out of 5
The greens were rolling great. They were not as quick as I have been used to playing here but they had a really good pace to them. Downhill putts were still testy but you could be more aggressive on an uphill putt. The greens were very smooth too giving you a true roll. There were a decent amount of unfixed ball marks on the greens but as long as you saw them and repaired them you didn't have to worry about anything on the greens.
Overall the course was really good. Besides the unfilled divots, I had one other big issue. That was the amount of unraked bunkers. There were so many footprints in every bunker. One bunker I was in you could see where a golfer's footprint clearly stepped over the rake. I was in three bunkers for the day and in each of them, I basically raked the entire bunker to rake not just my footprints but others. You can see me do this in the review video around the 1:43 mark.
Outside of the issues I came across that are caused by golfers, Carter Plantation is worth the drive up to play. The rate is also good based on the conditions and the staff as well.
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