I played a few holes here on the Greenback Course at Heron Lakes Golf Club last year. I was unable to complete the round, but wanted to come back to see the rest of the course and officially add it to my list of courses played. There are 36 holes at Heron Lakes Golf Club (Robert Trent Jones Jr. designed) and the Greenback Course usually takes a back seat to the Great Blue Course. I played Great Blue about five years ago and enjoyed it.
I found an early morning tee time on Golfnow and ended up paying about $40 to ride, which turned out to be a great deal considering the mint conditions. Heron Lakes is a municipal course that gets a lot of play so I was surprised that it was in such great shape. All the turf was lush and a beautiful green color. The greens rolled true, with some speed.
While the layout isn’t anything flashy, the course is a good one to walk and the facility offers easy access from most of the Portland metro. Many holes are parkland style and there are a couple good stretches of holes. For example, the 6th to the 9th and the 14th to the 16th are stretches that I liked.
The 6th is a mid length par-4 which requires an accurate tee shot and the 8th and 9th are dogleg right par-4’s which require some knowledge as to where to hit the tee shot. The 9th is one of my favorite holes because it needs a tee shot through some trees that frame the tee box. It is easy to drive it through the fairway into more trees or miss out to right – which will likely leave you just chipping back to the fairway.
I enjoyed the collection of par-3’s on Greenback. The 3rd and 16th require a carry over water while the 7th is a long par-3, playing 207 yards. I played the blue tees at 72.0/128/6615 and the theme of water was consistent on many holes. Water affects play on about half the holes so a crooked day could result in quite a few lots balls! Still, there is a nice mix of easier and tougher golf holes.
The most noticeable negative about Greenback is probably its location. The course is near some train tracks, the airport and a local raceway is right around the corner. The resulting noise (constant) from all these modes of transportation was quite distracting while trying to golf.
If you are an out-of-towner then Great Blue is the course you’ll want to play first. Greenback is a good value course for the locals and there is nothing wrong it – it is functional and practical. However, it likely wouldn’t be my first choice in its price range because of all the distractions. If you can overlook all the outside noise then it is worth a shot.
Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):
