I was thankful for the opportunity to join Cottonwood in 2016, but wanted to write a candid review of my year to hopefully help others in the same process. This wasn't my first year with a golf club so I was able to use other experiences as a benchmark. Overall, I was not very impressed, but there were some positives.
Positives:
-Michelle at the administrative office was very helpful throughout the year, including setting up payments, ect.
- The course is very peaceful and secluded. Generally the course is well maintained.
-The practice area is being rebuilt post flood from a few years ago.
- The restaurant serving staff was very nice.
-The golf club storage and maintenance staff was very kind and helpful. Generally, they were high school/ college age and very hard working.
Negatives:
-I wasn't overly impressed with the general manager Tiff. I had two fairly discouraging experiences with Tiff. Primarily, if you're hoping to use the membership to golf weekday evenings after work; this is not the course for you. Their weather and closure policy is tailored towards their primary demographic of older retirees. I understand most courses have an older demographic, but there were over 15 occasions when I wanted to golf and it was closed with no one on the course because of weather or a tournament earlier in the day . If Cottonwood held a tournament from 9-5, and it's great weather after 5:00PM, they would send most of the staff home and close the course making it impossible for someone to play 9 holes of twilight after work. This occurred 5-6 times throughout the season. In addition, if there were ever multiple thunderstorms earlier in the day, they would close the course down for the late afternoon/evening even if the course was dry and sunny. Once they have to bring people in twice, the course is closed for the rest of the day. The general level of tolerance for poor weather was shocking as well. Sometimes I would drive to to course without calling and it would be closed due to weather, I would drive past Carnmoney, Heritage Pointe, and Mackenzie meadows, and Blue devil on my way home to see all of them open with people on the course; this was very frustrating after 8-9 times. Given that I am unable to play during early times most days, this course was a very poor fit for me.
-Since they're often closed for weekday twilight, I tried to play a quick 18 holes before work started. We were scheduled to be the 2nd tee time of the day around 6:30Am. I called the pro shop the night before to ask if I would be able to move ahead of the first time to play quickly. They advised that I should show up early and speak to the marshall and perhaps he would let us out earlier. We showed up, spoke to the marshall, he said we could go first if we played quickly. So we tee'd off, and hurried down the fairway thus to not delay, only to have the pro Dale, chase us down from behind to belabour us for a few minutes! Then he explained we could either go back to the first tee and wait for our time or wait 20 minutes for the next group to come while we wait for our original foursome. Needless to say we weren't able to finish 18 and there was absolutely no reason for him to make us feel like we'd broken rules when we were given the "ok" by staff and marshall earlier. If we caught up to the maintenance crew, we would have no issues waiting or playing around them.
-There is a food minimum at the club which isn't atypical for private clubs; I was accepting of this when joining. However, the method by which they update is only on a monthly basis, so when September 30th arrived (spending deadline), the was $120 required to be spent that wasn't. I asked Tiff if I would be able to enjoy the restaurant prior to October 10th (club closing date) to spend the $120. She completely ignored my request without response.
-The food is below average at the club.
-The club is full, tee times are hard to get last minute.
I am very glad I didn't buy an equity membership before trying it for one season. There's a reason the share price is so low.