Last month I purchased vouchers for two private courses from iDealGolfer.com. One of those vouchers was for Shady Valley Country Club while the other one is for Canyon Creek Country Club – both being ClubCorp courses. It seems these vouchers are “member for a day” previews.

As I’ve mentioned before I’m mostly a public course player (invites welcome!) so I was excited to play a private course. Although, I now see there are tee times through Golfnow here for $65. So, I’d probably call the course “semi-private”, at least as things stand right now. My voucher only cost $29 so it turned out to be an awesome deal, especially with the course’s beautiful greens!

The greens were the highlight of my Shady Valley experience, no question about it! The greens were very quick (a bit too quick for my tastes) and rolled pure – think almost blemish-free. Throw in the general slope of the greens from back to front and I ended up with plenty of devilish putts when beyond the hole.

The rest of the conditioning was solid considering the 100+ temperatures the last couple of months. The few fairways that I found had plenty of grass and some cushion under the ball. Off the fairways things were drier and had that brown summer look. The conditions were a step above the average public course, but not much more.

As far as the design goes, if you play here be prepared for the sound of your golf ball hitting trees, unless your miss from the tee is only 10 yards one way or the other! The course occupies a smaller piece of property with mature trees lining each hole. The driving areas are tiny and the breezy conditions made finding fairways even more difficult. You can lay up off the tee but I don’t have that kind of accuracy with my irons either! If you can find the fairways then I’d expect some birdie and par looks on those holes.

The course is only 6,621 yards from the blue tees (par-71) and has a surprisingly high rating of 73.2 and slope of 138! I played the blue/white combo tees (love combo tees) and it isn’t much easier from there (72.2/136/6358). Another thing that adds to the difficulty is that the greens are small and slightly mounded, which made chipping around them tough.

I don’t know that there is a signature hole at Shady Valley but the back nine has the more interesting holes (or so I think). The 10th is a 437 yard par-4 that plays through a narrow gap from the tee. If you are out of position then there is a water hazard to catch shots that are too aggressive.

The 14th was my favorite hole at Shady Valley. It is a 405 yard par-4 that plays uphill and has a bit of a Hill Country look to it. The green’s surface is blind from the fairway and has a small back level, where the flag was tucked when I played.

Shady Valley turned out to be one of those courses that didn’t fit my game and as a result, it wore me out. If you miss these fairways there is very little chance to get the ball pin high. I think cutting down some trees would go a long way towards attracting new members. I’m glad I played here and it was a super deal, but take the “shady” in the course’s name very literally! Still, the course looks good even with all those pesky trees.

If you are thinking about joining here I’ll say that the staff was very friendly (both on the phone and in-person) and that the course is conveniently located in the Metroplex. I played in about 2.5 hours and certainly see the advantage of a private course when it comes to the pace of play!

Course Pictures (click any picture to scroll through the gallery):