Utah Golf List | Playing Utah Courses One Hole at a Time

It all started with a dream, a well thought out plan, an iron will, and a lot of golf balls. It was our goal, my brothers and mine, to golf 12 courses in 2 days. We knew that we couldn’t golf 18 at each course so we only golfed 9 holes at each course. Our goal that trip was quantity not quality. We had borrowed our fathers Cadillac and had filled it with food, blankets, and a plastic bin full of golf balls. The weeks leading up to the trip we had gone to various local golf courses to search for balls. We must have had 300 good golf balls ready for our trip.

A broad overview of our trip went like this:

Day one:

Carbon County Golf Club; (Helper)

Millsite Golf Course(Ferron)

Cove View Golf Club (Richfield)

Cherokee Springs Golf Course (Hatch)

Thunder Bird Resort (Mt. Carmel)

Coral Cliffs (Kanab)

STOP 1: Carbon County Golf Club:

We started our trip with a 3:30 am wake up call. We were headed from Salt Lake City to Price Utah to golf at the Carbon County Country Club (it is actually in Helper, UT.) We were able to golf the front nine in a little over an hour. Our plan was to get there first and be the first ones off the tee so we could speed golf through the course. We were really mad when we noticed a lone walker that snuck out on the tees before us. It turned out that our fears of being held up were not needed because this poor guy did not want to hold us up. There was times he was running to his ball and the next hole because we were gaining on him. We wanted to tell him thanks but don’t ruin your round over it, we can wait a bit.

The course is a lovely course with tree lined fairways and it meanders around the Price River. (for a full review see our Carbon County Country Club review).

STOP 2: Millsite Golf Course:

While driving to Millsite we had the Caddy (Father’s Cadillac) really moving. We were feeling good, we were on an all day golf trip, we had just finished our first course ahead of schedule and driving fast down scenic highway 80. We were heading up over a hill when a highway patrolman passed us. We slammed on our breaks but alas, it was too late. The patrolman’s lights flipped on and he flipped a U-Turn and pulled us over. As the cop was walking up from his car to ours he glanced in our back seat which had a plastic bin full of over 300 golf balls. We roll down our window and the office says, “going golfing huh?”. We replied that we were and he let us go with a warning. Thank goodness we were pulled over by a golf fan.

Millsite is a great little 9 hole course right outside of Ferron Utah. The course is actually part of Millsite State Park, which includes Millsite Reservoir. The course has some great holes including a 600 yard par five and a scenic par three that is set up against the Millsite damn. The par three is ranked as the seventh best hole in Utah by the state of Utah. (http://www.utah.com/golf/top_18/millsite/millsite.htm)

Also, the golfers on the course at Millsite were the nicest, friendliest golfers we have ever met. We were on a tight schedule as you can imagine and three groups let us play through. Millsite was truly a hidden gem in Utah golf courses.

Stop 3: Cove View Golf Course, (Richfield Utah).

Our Drive from Millsite to Richfield was not very eventful. It was the longest stretch we had for the day. Cove View is a nice course. It is an 18 hole, par 72 course. The course was expanded to 18 holes in 2001 and the length is now 6,495 yards. The course is relatively flat but it includes 5 lakes which gives water hazards on 13 of the holes.

STOP 4: Cherokee Springs Golf Course:

Of all the golf courses we played on this trip, Cherokee Springs was our favorite. Cherokee Springs is listed in Hatch Utah but that is really not that true. Cherokee Springs is actually in the sage brush latten desert west of Hatch Utah. First off, we couldn’t find the place. We drove up and dove Hatch at least 4 times. We called the club house and each time they would give us the same directions, “go past Hatch about 4 miles and look for a golf cart on the west side of the road, turn left after the golf cart.” On the fifth go round we finally saw the golf cart and we turned on the dirt road. The dirt road though was not the end of the troubles. What the club house didn’t tell us was how to get to the course from the “golf cart”. The course was still a couple of miles up the dirt road. We just keep driving saying to one another, “this cant be right”. But alas, it was right. Perched atop a hill was a log cabin looking house with some beat up golf carts littered around it in no particular order. We parked, the only car in the lot, and walked up to the club house.

Outside the club house we met “Bandito”. We don’t know what Bandito’s real name is because when we asked him his name he said, “Hel*, I could tell you Jeff or Bill or something like that but you will leave here and never remember. I go by Bandito.” Well, true to his words, his is the only name we remembered from the trip. Every idea that pops into your head when you hear a name like Bandito is probably a truism when it come to the man. He could talk to a stump. We stood there in the club house for at least a half an hour while Bandito gave us the run down of the course. He kept saying, “I know you are in a hurry but,…” and then he would launch into a story about some golfers that stopped through from Chicago. My brother and I collect logo balls from every course we play but Bandito did not have any. He told us to put down our address on a piece of paper and he would sent them to us. We did as he told and we are still waiting for those logo balls.

The map of the course is a little liberal with the green areas. In truth, the course has a green tee box, then sage brush for the next 100 yards. At about 150 yards there is a fairway that would go for another 50-100 yards. Then there would be another break until the green. From the picture above, everywhere there is dark green, that is actually sage brush or desert brush. Bandito also had hand painted signs at each tee box informing the golfer of the hole #, the Yardage, Par, and the “Smart Shot”. The smart shot was what the safe play was on each hole. All in all, Cherokee springs was a fun course. It is a 9 hole, par 36. We had such a good time there that we took the most pictures here than any other golf course.

Our fifth stop took us down the road to Mt. Carmel. Thunderbird is a 9 hole, par 31 golf course right off highway 89. The course looks great from the highway and is a great little respite from a long car ride. A couple funny stories from this place. The first was that it took the kid behind the counter at least 20 minutes to take our money and get us on the course. He was obviously new and had no idea what he was doing. There was a lady who was working with him who had to be training him but I am assuming that she had been dealing with him all day and was at her wits end because her patients was about as thin as a fruit roll up. The poor guy would take the money and then wait for her to tell him what to do next. She would call out directions and he would try to comply with whatever she told him. The problem was that he was basically incapable of following directions and he would ask her to repeat what she had just said. This went on for a long time and by the end, my brother and I had memorized the process from hearing it from the lady so many times that we were walking him through it. After he had finally finished, he had forgot to charge my brother for a cart and it started all over again. We ended up just giving him a 10 dollar bill for a 7 dollar cart fee and left to golf.

The other funny incident that happened was on the first tee. The first hole is a 210 yard par 3 that ran directly parallel with Highway 89. I teed up my ball and pulled out my 3 hybrid. I snap hooked my first ball out of bounds over the highway. Having no one behind us and the course was dead, I teed up a second ball. This one was also snap hooked like the first but not as bad. It still went out of bounds though so I teed up a third ball. My third ball ended up just like the first two but this one was going straight for the highway. Not only that, it was tracking exactly for a white minivan. Everything turned in slow motion and I knew that it was going to hit the minivan. I started to get nervous and started jumping around like a teenager saying, “It’s going to hit that car, oh my gosh, it is going to hit that car.” Continuing on with the teenager mentality I was looking for a place to hide so they wouldn’t be able to see who the culprit was. Luckily, the ball barely missed the minivan and I came out of my hiding spot.

The course was a lot of fun but sadly to say, we did not eat any of the “Ho-made pies”.

STOP 6: Coral Cliffs, Kanab

We arrived at Coral Cliffs ahead of schedule amazingly enough. We had a good talk with the guy that ran the place and he told us we can golf as much as we want until the sun go downs. We took him up on it and was able to golf 18 holes here. Coral Cliffs is a wonderful 9 hole, par 36, course in the sleepy town of Kanab. The course is beautiful and is tucked away against the red cliffs of Kanab. The course had tons of rabbits all around and is fun to see them hop around.

The third hole is a short par 4 that has a lake in the middle that causes you to lay up. My brother had hit a great drive and was sitting in the cart proudly as I was driving him to it. On the way there I came up over a little hill and suddenly saw a large snake right in front of me. I pulled the wheel to the left sharply to try to avoid the snake all without a word to my brother. Well, I didn’t turn soon enough and I ran over the snake. What’s more, the sharp turn took my brother off guard and threw him out of the cart.

As we were on the 18th green putting out, the man the ran the course pulled up in his big green truck to inform us that it was time to shut the gate. He was really nice and we had talked at length earlier about our trip and everywhere we were going to golf out. He rolled down his window and asked us where we were going to stay at that night. We told him that we were going to sleep in our car. He shook his head and said that it still gets cold at night and that is not very enjoyable. He then said that he owned a local motel and that if we would go over there and tell his son that he sent us he would give us a room for $20. We took him up on it and drove down to the “Treasure Trail Motel”. We appreciated the bed to sleep in but what we really enjoyed was being able to shower off the dirt and sweat of a full days of golf.

When all was said and done, we had driven on the first day 381 miles from our meeting place in Draper Utah to Kanab Utah and had golfed 63 holes. Not bad for one day!