Costa Mesa CC (Los Lagos)
Costa Mesa, CA
ALERT: Aeration
Will be aerating the greens 4/23.
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Reviewed by: roarksown1, Playa del Rey
Finally played one of the two Costa Mesa GC 18s this past weekend and it was quite a fun day out with an old friend and two of his buddies. Paid $61 with a cart to play from the blue tees on the Los Lagos 18. Apparently it’s a little bit longer than the other one, but they’re both equally challenging.
And I did find the course challenging. There are a lot of water features that come into play, some mounding and funky angles in the fairways, long par 3s to test your accuracy, and a few well-placed bunkers that make you plan ahead before every shot. I enjoyed the layout more than I thought I would having studied it a bit the night before.
Conditions were pretty darn good across the board. I found the greens to be in very nice shape and they were very fun to putt from all day. They were definitely fast and firm though so holding shots wasn’t always super easy. But no complaints on the roll.
Fairways are in nice overall shape, with the exception of just a few holes on the back nine. But even where it was a bit thinner, it was mostly playable except for a few of the exposed patches that crept in here and there. The rough was a healthy mix of short and playable to some areas where it was tough to find your ball.
Sand traps were unfortunately either just watered or still soaked a bit from last week’s rain, but they were not optimal for the day. They may play just fine now, but on that particular day, they were best avoided altogether. And the tee boxes were all mostly good but I’ve never seen tee box markers so far apart. Easy to find a flat lie when you’ve got 20-30 feet of room to work with. That was interesting.
It was a busy Saturday so we certainly did some waiting around on many holes, especially the par 3s. I think we came in a just around five hours even. Cart service showed up once or twice as well. Overall, a very nice day out and I look forward to playing the other 18 there to complete the circle. But if asked to play Los Lagos again, I’d do it in a heartbeat.
