Kings Links Golf Course by the Sea

Excellent links course… very friendly and helpful staff… building a beautiful club house… excellent value… enjoy

Great course. Very well maintained. Friendly staff. Grass driving range is great. The back 9 is very challenging and helps improve your golf skills. Fairways are wide enough to be forgiving. Watch out for the resident bald eagle that will fly down and steal your ball. It may be your first eagle!

From first glance it seems straight forward and it is, until you hit the rough, the wind and the greens. This is a beautiful links course and my favorite course in the lower mainland. The fairways are like hitting off a mat, perfect lie almost every time. The greens are wicked fast.
There’s no fancy club house, and if you don’t look up you get views of farmer’s fields and the dike, but this is a golfers’ golf course. Come to play and bring your ‘A’ game. After your first 3-​putt, and you will 3-​putt, take a breath and take in the views of Baker and the North shore mountains.
Awesome staff, and Delta’s little secret. I can’t wait until Spring.

This course will test you every time if only for the fact that due to its proximity to Boundary Bay it’s very rare to have a windless day and rarer still to get the same winds 2 rounds in a row. The fun (?!) really starts if it’s blowing 15 – 20, especially out of the west, but it’s no picnic from any direction. If you haven’t played it yet I strongly recommend you first get out to a range and learn how to hit knockdown shots. Trajectory is key here almost every day.
It’s more forgiving in the spring and late fall when things are a little softer, but in the height of the season it’s something else. Those drivers you were hitting on some holes in April and May will give way to mid-​long irons or hybrids for distance control. The fairways are hard and fast. Using your putter, a fairway wood or a hybrid when 30 feet from the green is the way to go unless you’re very talented at chipping from tight, tight lies.
Last winter all the sand in the greenside bunkers were replaced with a sand more indigenous to the area. It’s quite dark and coarse but very playable. The fairway bunkers are being done this winter.
The greens are the fastest in the lower mainland but very receptive, so it’s imperative to keep your ball below the hole. If you’re putting downhill, well, good luck!
They’ve done an excellent job shaping the holes and over the last few years have scaled back the natural fescues to keep it penal but not punishing to the point of being unfair.
Do your scoring on the front 9 (easier said than done) and 10 – 14 because 15 – 18 is a real test and will destroy a good round in a heartbeat. 16 and 18 are long par 4’s with 18 having water all the way down the right side and partially guarding the green. 17 is a short par 4 but a beast with water all the way down the left, OB right and a two-​tiered island green. 16 is a not overly long par 3 but there’s water all the way down the left side and shots to the left slope off the green have little chance of staying dry. Large bunker and some gnarly grasses on the right make hitting onto another two-​tiered green towards the water a gut-​check experience.
You may be brought to your knees and go home crying after a round because it can beat you up. But shoot a good score and you definitely have something to brag about. Either way, you’ll be back. It’s just so different from anything else in the area.
The staff and how things are run are OUTSTANDING! No charge pull carts — what a concept! Grass tee driving range and a great chipping green with on-​course conditions replicated. Small clubhouse but with a great deck where you can watch the action on 10 and 18. It has a real small-​town rural feel — no pretentious surroundings or arrogant country club types whether staff or customers. Because the kitchen’s small the menu is limited but it’s tasty and the beer is really, really, really cold! Everyone gets that their job is to give you the best possible experience and they succeed.
All those overpriced, charge-​you-​for-​everything and we-​have-​your-​money-​now-​beat-​it courses we have around here could learn some valuable lessons from Kings Links.
I presume that because they are so close to the water and our winters being what they are, the course shuts down in early November and does maintenance, changes and improvements over the winter, allowing the course to recuperate. Now baseball is not the only thing to look forward to come springtime!

This golf course is unlike any in the lower mainland and golfers will either love it or hate it. It is unapologetic links golf.
It is not lush and green, it is hard and yellow. The greens are the fastest in the lower mainland, they are perched with shaved fall aways in most directions and are built to repel approach shots. 3 ft putts must be struck squarely and with purpose. The fairways are full of wild bounces and uneven lies. Poor shots want to run off into the unkept fescue rough. The bunkers are very hard so that the strong prevailing winds don’t blow all of the sand away.
This is a player’s course that rewards shot making and penalizes mediocrity. You must control your trajectory, imagine how your shot will run and no crying if you can’t. It’s not the place for a leisurely, recreational walk about. This is breezy linksland where you will play against the elements and test your abilities. A poor round here can leave you questioning why you came here or even why you bother to play golf. A good round here satisfies you like few others will.