Rancho San Marcos Golf Course

Santa Barbara, CA

Reviewed by: Alex326, Monterey, Ca

Played Rancho San Marcos on Sunday as part of our GK Cup matches. Had a blast of a time on a course that’s quickly becoming a personal favorite (6 birdies in 3 rounds helps). The layout is super fun and dare I say the perfect mix between challenging yet very scorable. There are some wide open fairways with elevated tees that allow you to grip it and rip it. Yet there are some narrow doglegs with tree trouble that make accuracy with less than driver the ideal choice. Add in a couple of lakes and forced carries over dry (for now ) ravines and you can’t help but come away with a smile after playing this track.

Condition wise we were forwarded that the summer heat has taken a bit of toll on the course. Still it was in nice shape around a 7.5 out of 10 overall. Greens were rolling fast. Again they offer a decent amount of challenge but are very manageable. There were a few unrepaired pitch marks on a few of the greens which must have been brought to their attention because they had a kid out repairing divots. Very cool to see that. There were also a couple of greens that had some small GUR areas. The damage may have been caused my wildlife. Regardless the pins were placed far away from these areas so they were pretty much a non factor.

I seemed to find great lies every time in the fairway (regardless of which fairway I was in).
Some of the bunkers were showing signs of the summer heat with crusty and/or hard packed dirt. Others were fine.

Staff was excellent and POP was whatever we wanted. We practically had the course to ourselves.

I used to always look forward to going to thie Santa Ynez region for cycling and racing. Now I think I’ll start making regular plans to hang out in the area for golf.