Recreation Park 18 Golf Course

Came here for a wedding last weekend. I found this country club to be a small but quaint. The wedding room hosted a room for buffet and cake, a small dance floor, a small patio, and medium size banquet hall perfect for a small wedding.

The course is fun but…
The greens on the front nine suck major donkey nads!!! Damn near every one of the greens is like putting through a cross between a «dried out mini mud run» course and ant sized sand dunes. Can’t read the boogers no matter how hard you try. And your ball will bounce all over them. Want a clear path to the cup? Forget about it… It’s not happenin’ here…
While I have played all 18 holes here a few times, the vast majority of my familiarity lies with the front 9 and the toughest holes for me always seems to be either the par four 3^rd hole or par three 5^th hole. They just eat my shorts. The par three is especially tough on me when it’s uphill…
Anywho… The back nine is a lot more fun and in way, way better condition. Just wish I had the opportunity to play them more often. Relatively inexpensive course to boot.
Smallish bar area but the waitress in there, (Sandra), is awesome!!! She’ll hook you up with all the ice you need to keep your libations cold on those hot summer days…

Reviewing this location as a wedding venue and not as a golf course.
As a first time bride, I searched high and low to look for a perfect venue for my perfect wedding. This is what I got at Rec Park!
I found this place as a referral from a gf who had been here before. I loved the flow and zen vibe I got from the place the few times I stopped by before I booked it.
Our coordinator Katelyn was awesome with everything. She advised and assisted me with everything at the venue to make sure I had my dream wedding under budget. She worked with me to make sure I could realistically get the affect I wanted without going overboard. I loved that I could run any idea by her and she would either tell me why it won’t work, why it’s a great idea or how I could improve it.
She was not able to be there on the day of the wedding so she made sure she gave me the best wedding present — Sara, from At Your Door Events! She made my day extra special.
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With Sara’s assistance and Katelyn’s guidance ahead of time we pulled out an amazing day. They made my wedding just slightly less stressful lol.
My guest had an easy time finding the location. Parking was free and easy to get. The food was delicious. The staff took very good care of us. Kudos to them as well!
Everybody complimented us on the wedding. They loved how we decorated it, although it did not need much.
Will recommend this location for any future weddings out there! P. S. Save money like I did by having your wedding on a Friday night :)

The course itself is nice and well kept. Today it took us 40 minutes to play the first two holes and 3 hours to play the front 9. We left at the 10^th hole it was ridiculous. If we stayed and played it would have been at least a 6 hour round.

Decent course. Slowest playing course I’ve very experienced in 15 years of playing golf. 5somes everywhere. Never going back.

The holes are too close to each other, many times people are coming to your fairway to hit shots, or vice versa. The staff is very friendly and helpful, and the condition of the course is also ok. Weird thing is this course allows 5 some, which is a huge mistake, 3 carts on the course at the same time? Really? Won’t come back again.
And, players there aren’t very friendly, don’t know why. Maybe just the foursome we’ve met, they have no problem hitting there ball to your fairway, but if you do the same thing, they look really pissed, and stared at you until they failed their shots again, and too embarrassed to look at you.

Muni course in Long Beach. I teed off at 610am in the dark. $ 39 with cart on golfzing.
The front 9 took 1 hr. Wide open, easy course. Should be an PR type of place.
The back 9 I paired with a single walker. Total time was 2.5 round. Not too shabby.
Tee boxes– average.
Fairways– patchs. Below average. Very hard turf. Poor condition.
Greens– below average. Fast. Dye in some areas.
But, beautiful «looking» course. Just being so close to the ocean. Will return.

If you’re looking for a fun OLD WORLD golf course, this is a track for you. Very open layout with not too many bunkers. Built over a hundred years ago, this course used to be the original Virginia Country Club before they moved to their now present location.
This course can get a little crowded and play on the slow side, but then again what well kept municipal course with affordable greens fees doesn’t take a while to play?
Watch out for their driving range though, it is not long enough to hit full drivers and there are very few hitting bays. I wouldn’t recommend coming here to just practice full shots, but if you want to work on your short game this course has one of the best short game facilities for public access that I can think of! Two large putting greens, a very large chipping and pitching area with practice bunkers as well.

Just finished golfing at this course. It isn’t a bad course but badly run. While playing our round someone turned on the sprinklers making it so we could not finish our game. When my group asked what they will do because we could not finish after paying for a full round. They only said they will give a free cart rental. We spent over 100 and all they did was offer a cart rental which they say was only $ 7 how is that fair? We asked for a manager that never showed. Customer service there sucks. I have never had worse. I got tired of waiting for the manager so I took off. If a manager doesn’t take care of paying customers then who there will care?

Great local golf course to play. I have played this course for many years and the staff here is great. There is a lot of available tee times. During this visit I played a foursome during twilight. The only downside is that the marshall did not push players to keep moving forward and the tees did get backed up. I was able to complete 18, but it got really dark. There is usually a staff member with a food cart providing food and refreshments, which is great because you don’t have to wait till the 9^th hole to grab something quickly. The golf range is pretty small and is a little awkward because its angled and gets shorter the further left you go (because of the street it’s at). Overall a great public course with a great staff.

Cliff notes: I just can’t say this facility is worth the green fee’s of $ 50 plus dollars. If you’re able to get a resident card or play twilight, the rates will be more appropriate for the conditions. Lots of patchy grass along fairways, hard sand traps, greens are full of bumps. When you start to care about your score, little things like this matter. If your still a 25+ handicap then these types of things won’t matter and this is a good course to practice on (other than stiff price).

I work for a local charity in Long Beach (New Hope Grief Support) and we recently hosted are 4^th Annual Golf Tournament at Big Rec. I just want to shout out how professional and easy to work with the staff were; both on the golf side and the catering. Be sure to work with Dori if you have a special event, she will make it one to remember. Tony and Jack at the course were great to work with too. Thanks for helping to make our tournament a success!

A little disappointed today. I play here all the time and usually it’s pretty good. Today sucked! Over three hours to play the front nine. I ended up leaving. On hole eight I could see that 13 was wide open. Where was the marshal? I guess they had some tournament but you still need to regulate on the slow players.
In addition, some old guy who I was playing with had his cart die in hole eight green. What is up American Golf?

The greens 5
the play 5
the food in the bar 5
18 holes 4 hours 15 minutes
The problem? The RANGER BUDDY.
He rushed game play and was a complete A HOLE! No one behind us all day he pushed us 4 or 5 times and threatened to pick up our ball.
Note to RANGERS, When your golf cart sign has Ice cold water on it, offer it to players!

Con’s: super short course, tons of people, people don’t fix their ball marks, not much creativity in the course design.
Pro’s: relatively inexpensive, greens are fast and could be decent if people fixed their s**t, it’s short so you can work on different aspects of your game.
Can definitely get along here without a driver if you are a mid to long hitter. I enjoy this course for what it is.

Disclosure:
My friends and I only play the back 9.
We play at 5:45 am on Saturday mornings.
We all love Buddie.
I used to drive down from the West L.A. area every weekend just to play the back 9. My friend and I were usually in line by 5:45 am. Yes, there was a line. It was a great place for me to practice my driver. The fairways were pretty wide and even a little forgiving at times. But not all the time. Compared to most public courses, unless you were really off, there’s less of a chance of hitting your ball to another fairway. The greens were also nice and well-​maintained. Given the fact that they were always busy, they really did a great job with maintenance of the greens, the range, and just the entire facility.
Their staff: just awesome. Buddie, the starter, was always great.
Another great thing about this course is that if you golf there often enough, you really will see and golf with the same people. It’s hard for me to go to other courses in Long Beach because it’s just not the same. Big Rec is a place that feels like everyone knows your name. There are regulars and most of the golfers are friendly.

Played here for the 1^st time, and I will say I am a fan on Long Beach Muni Course. we went out as a 5some, following another 5some, and 2 of us were walking, but we still finished in 5 hours and only were backed up early in the round.
The course is not overly challenging, even from the back tees, which is just fine with me. I did not see any water on the course, and I usually get pulled toward it no matter where I think I am hitting. There are lots of mature trees, so there is still a chance to get into trouble, should you end up wide of your own fairway. We had a few tough pin placements, and there are enough bunkers if you really want to play in the sand.
The conditions were very good. The fairway did not have too many bare spots, and the rough was fairly lush throughout. Sand was heavy, especially early. Overall, well worth the greens fee.

My fiancé plays golf here, there are always practice mats available. I’m not that fond of the course, but its nice and gets really crowded on the weekends.
What this review is REALLY about is Rec park catering. We are getting married here and its a really nice venue. Cathy is very helpful and our package is pretty good considering it includes a lot of things I would have to get outside.
They do not have a lot of the restrictions here that they have at other venues as far as time goes, however, we are not able to bring in food or alcohol, which are really the big money. They are allowing us, however, to bring in some ethnic appetizers to serve at no cost.
The other great thing is that they only do 1 event/​day, so you have your place to yourself the entire time. They are really easy to work with and your cake comes from Rossmoor Bakery, which is phenomenal.
Excited for our wedding. Will definitely provide an update after its over.

Is it ever good when you have a tee time of 1045am and you tee off at 1120am? NO! Is it good that your round is almost 7 hours? NO! Ok ok… I don’t usually like weekend golf, but when you have a bunch of friends that have weekends off, you’ll book a tee time on a Saturday or Sunday too.
Rec Park 18 is cool in that they allow 5-​somes to play. The course isn’t all that hard, no water, open fairways, greens that are actually pretty fast for a public course. This course has minimal Asian groups (that I noticed that day), but then again, there were a lot of «hackers» out today.
When you build a 18-​hole golf course with minimal bathroom stops, you’re in trouble too. Put up some port-​o-​potties or something if needed.
The food stand was closed, but they had a guy BBQ’ing at the 10^th whole. Good burgers and hot dogs (see picture) or:
Luckily the 2 groups ahead of us were all friends and were hackers, so they took long to enough for our group to get our orders in and cooked by the time we teed off.
Our electric cart died again, but the starter sent out a nice kid with our replacement and we were on and cooking again.
Nice putting and chipping facilities but the driving range is a bit small. The club house is cool too, the staff were pretty cool. I’ll pass for Rec Park for now…

I set my alarm for 5:45am, as I knew my tournament tee time was 7:00am sharp. After hitting the snooze repeatedly, I was surprised to see the LED #s 630. YIKES!!! Brush teeth, shave, and throw on the shorts, shirt, and shoes in a record 10 minutes. Drive down the 405S in a record 30min to the course to a waiting employee with a golf cart. He shuttled me and my clubs to the rest of my group where I missed only the first hole. That’s pretty damn good service — 5 stars.
Rec Park is a Long Beach muni course that is suited to players of an intermediate level and above. Some of the holes have more length and character than what you would find on most municipal courses.
This course has some length, so do yourself a favor and get a cart.
Greens — average
Fairways — pretty good grass coverage, well maintained, tree lined with low density — fairly wide open
Course layout — has some character — mild elevation changes
Water holes — none
Driving range — very small
The course — 3.5 stars
Banquet Facilities — Our tournament always has a luncheon to announce which teams were the winners (sandbaggers with high handicaps). The buffet style lunch menu consisted of sausage hot dogs, hamburgers, and chicken breast sandwiches. The hamburger patties were floating in hot water to keep them warm (not a pretty site). Hungry golfers will eat anything.
Food — 3 stars