Bear Creek Golf Club - West Course

Rating and Review of Bear Creek West Golf Course in Dallas Texas

What a fun and challenging 18 holes of golf! Bear Creek West is like playing two different courses. The front nine is like a roller coaster ride with ups and downs and elevated tee boxes and blind shots. While the back is prettier and more forgiving.

The front nine's narrow oak tree lined fairways place a premium on accuracy off the tee box – miss left or right and it will hard to make par, so consider leaving your driver in the bag. On the front you'll also find blind shots, strategically placed bunkers, sloping and rolling fairways, and well protected greens – this nine is as treacherous as it is beautiful. Take number 7 for example, this 390 yard par 4 is the number one handicap and requires a perfect tee shot from an elevated tee box to carry the creek, avoid the trees preventing a drive to best side of the fairway, and missing the trees and bunker on the left. Survive that and you have a big uphill and narrow shot to the green and a chance at par. The front is the most challenging, but its a fair nine if you can somehow keep the ball in the fairway and manage the fairway slope.

The back nine is much more forgiving with more open,wider and flatter fairways and less ups and downs. This nine has a lot of variety, some very scenic holes, and a lot of character. You'll find water on 6 of 9 holes to contend with and it seems like it was easier for your ball to find the bunkers.

In February, it is always hard to judge the normal playing conditions, but we found the fairways to be about average condition and the greens to be in very good condition. The fairways are a little hard providing extra roll and if there was any rough it was cut short. Miss the fairway and rough and you're in the dirt and rocks under the trees. The greens were about average speed, had some undulation, and a lot of slope. I don't know if it was just a bad putting day for our party, or if the greens were that tough – we didn't make very many putts and two and three putts were common.

We haven't played Bear Creek in awhile and in April 2016 a visitor send us this email: "I suggest you take another look at the condition of Bear Creek Golf Course in Dallas, Texas. Neither course is being well maintained. I play out here regularly. Traps need sand. The greens are inconsistent, rarely aerated and several have large areas of sand and no grass. Many of the tee boxes are so hard you can't get a tee in them. Also there are a lot of washed out areas with holes that need dirt and grass."

Both the East and West courses are fantastic and you should go out of your way to play them. As further testimony, Bear Creek has been named among the "Top 50 Resort Courses in America" by Golf Digest and one of the "10 Great Places to Golf" by The Wall Street Journal. Make sure you check Bear Creek's website for some specials before you head out to play. In 2009 they had a fantastic Player Development Program – for example, for $29 a month you get unlimited use of the practice facilities, free participation in instructional clinics, 25% off merchandise, 10% off personalized instruction, and only have to pay for the cart fee when you play – can't beat that for a great deal on an outstanding course.

The East Course is also great and we rated it 8.2 – read the review of Bear Creek East Course.