I booked an afternoon round at Duran Golf Club and was hoping for a budget place to play in the morning. After some sleuthing online I decided to try Turtle Creek Golf Club, which is about 15 minutes from Duran.

The green fee was about $40 – reasonable for what you get here. Turtle Creek isn’t a destination course and it isn’t super memorable. So I’ll get that out of the way first. However, it isn’t surrounded by homes and proved to be quite challenging.

Turtle Creek was designed by Robert Renaud and opened in 1971. Renaud looks to have designed a couple other courses in the Southeast, but I’m not familiar with his work. Overall, the architecture is pretty plain, although the course has a good look to it. Pine trees and palm trees separate most holes and I played here on a nice morning.

I’d say the main thing you should know about the Turtle Creek is that it requires plenty of straight golf shots. That isn’t something I’m known for and not surprisingly, I struggled to keep the ball in play. Holes are narrow and there is a lot of water, especially on the front nine. That can make things particularly difficult for those with a less than reliable tee game, even though Turtle Creek is a shorter course.

The course is a par-72 and only 6,250 yards from the gold tees. Easy you’d think. I hit as many hybrids and long irons as I could to get the ball in play – which sort of worked. That left me with longer approach shots which made it tougher to get an iron shot close. Still, all the par-5’s are under 500 yards and can yield some birdies.

I thought the par-3’s and the closing holes at Turtle Creek were solid. The 6th is a 146 yard par-3 that plays mostly over water. The water shouldn’t have got in my head with a short iron, but it did. The closing holes, including the par-5 17th and par-4 18th have some risk/reward elements to them.

For the price the conditions were fine. The tees had a decent amount of grass. The fairways and greens were mixed. Some fairways had good coverage while others had good sized bare spots. Some greens were full while others had sections that looked diseased.

Bottom line, Turtle Creek is a budget course that probably ranks towards the bottom of the public courses in the area. There is more target golf here than I prefer, but I’m always happy to try a course for the first time – including this one.

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