Dakota Dunes Golf Links - Golf Course Review

This past weekend we headed up to Saskatoon to celebrate our first wedding anniversary and played a round at the beautiful Dakota Dunes Golf Links just south of Saskatoon on the Whitecap Dakota First Nation. Besides the incredibly drawn out pace of play and a couple rude staff members, overall the experience was great.

We had a 1:07 tee time, so after doing some shopping at Golf Town in Saskatoon we made our way to Dakota Dunes in plenty of time, arriving at around noon. We checked in and grabbed a bite to eat. Two green fees and a cart came to $149 – possibly the most you will pay anywhere in Saskatchewan – which is a treat to have access to such affordable, great golf courses. The pro shop staff seemed to have it together pretty well and were very friendly and helpful.

For lunch, $20 bought a turkey sandwich and onion rings for Katlyn and a bison burger with fries for me. Great lunch, definitely recommend the bison and the onion rings especially. The girl at the counter and the cook who brought our food out were extremely friendly as well.

Still with plenty of time, we headed down to the driving range to hit a few balls. Range balls were complimentary and waiting at the practice tee, as they should be at all upper end golf courses. Hats off to Dakota Dunes for providing practice balls with every green fee. They also have a large undulating practice green with a bunker adjacent to the range. Having everything right there is a nice feature.

The pro shop calls out the order on the tee from the loud speaker, so we headed up to the first tee when we heard our names. We were paired up with two locals from Saskatoon – John and Larry – who were a treat to play with and we met them on the practice putting green beside the first tee (another great idea in the layout).

In hindsight, a beef that I have is that there was no starter on the first tee. If your course has a tendency to get backed up, you need a starter at the first tee to lay out the ground rules and to make sure the groups go off at the right time. A poor pace of play begins right off the hop by pushing groups out one on top of the next. On a slow golf course, 10 minute tee time intervals should be used to make sure some air stays in the golf course. Sure you might lose a couple of tee times every day, but people won’t be as likely to be stuck waiting on every tee box. But I digress.

The golf course is immaculate. Tees, fairways, greens, even the rough, all in pristine condition. Probably the best conditioned golf course I have seen anywhere in the province for a long time, with the exception of the Riverside in Saskatoon. The designers have done a great job of meshing the wild prairie grass areas together with the maintained areas of the course. They use what they call “Blow-out Bunkers” – unmaintained sand traps or waste areas – as a great buffer area between some of the thick wild grass/bush and the fairway. The sand in all the bunkers is soft and fluffy making them very forgiving to play out off, which is good because they are littered throughout the course. Often the bunkers are bordered with thick wild grass, but other times they blend nicely into the fairway as if they were on a traditional links course across the pond. The rolling hills and dunes also provide for some magnificent vistas.

Between the four of us in the group we played three different sets of tees, but with five sets of tees, the course still had two more sets left untouched in our group. From the Black Tees, Dakota Dunes plays to a total of 7301 yards over the par 72 track. The sign on the first tee says that you need special permission to play the blacks, so I bit off 6815 yards from the Gold Tees. John and Larry played the 6310 Blue Tees, and Katlyn played the 5154 Red Tees. Length is never a big deal for me, so the distance wasn’t really an issue. The biggest challenge is consistently keeping it on the straight and narrow. But the biggest difference that I noticed between the Gold and Blue tees is that you are forced to hit a lot more blind shots from the Gold’s than the Blue’s. Playing it for the first time made it a bit tough to pick lines and envision the landing areas, but I imagine after a few times it would get quite a bit easier to trust where you’re hitting it.

My favourite hole of the day had to be the 376 yard par 4 13th at Dakota Dunes. It’s a 90 degree dogleg left with options. Long hitters can take a shot at the green by going over a valley of thick bush and prairie grass. The carry from the Gold Tees is probably around 280. Your other option is to lay up to about 120 yards and go at the green from there. I hit my best drive of the day at the green and came up about 20 yards short of the surface. It’s actually quite deceiving to see how much room is between the valley and the green (probably a good 80 yards) as it doesn’t look that way from the tee. Either way, it’s a really fun hole to play.

Now I have to touch on a couple negative aspects of our day. There was a five-some playing in front of us for the first few holes on the front nine. The course was backed up all the way around so it didn’t really affect the pace a whole bunch, but it still shouldn’t happen. On about #5 the “Course Host” told us that he split them up into a threesome and a twosome and the pace picked up a fraction. We were still 3 hours on the front nine.

After 3 hours on one nine, you work yourself into a slower routine. You take your time because you’re waiting at every shot anyway. On number 14 fairway, the Course Host approached us and said that he was pushing the two groups ahead of us pretty hard and that we needed to try to keep up. Smart move on his part if we were falling behind (which I didn’t notice we were) by saying that he pushed the groups ahead of us. This makes it seem like we’re not at fault (because no one wants to be thought of as the problem) but it gets us to pick up the pace at the same time. Ok, no big deal.

The following hole is a par 3. We get to the green and the course host is back and tells us that it’s getting to the point in the round where he might have to get us to pick up our balls and skip a hole if we don’t get back in position. Huh? We had two shots to pick up the pace from the last time he spoke to us? This threw off the whole day. All of a sudden we’re in a rush to catch up to a twosome and a threesome in front of us, who all of a sudden decided to race off once the people ahead of them got off the course. I’m sorry, but a foursome with a relative beginner lady and two older guys that aren’t that consistent are not going to be able to keep up to a twosome and a threesome with no one in front of them. And threatening to make a group skip a hole on #16, five hours into a round of golf is ridiculous. This guy went from having the smartest approach to the worst approach in about 10 minutes. The worst part is that we weren’t holding anyone up. I know that’s not supposed to matter because your job is to keep up to the group ahead, but in these circumstances, it did matter.

To cap it all off, it was 32 degrees outside and we were low on fluids. After the round we went up to the restaurant to get our water refilled (which they were kind enough to do for us after 9) and to buy a chocolate bar for the road. Apparently this is an extraordinary request because the new lady working the till was busy ringing in tabs from the day (or something like that) and just looked at us across the counter and said “I could be a while” when we wanted to buy something. Maybe it was because she thought we just wanted our water bottle filled, but that shouldn’t matter. Your job is to serve the patrons of the course. Anyway, we got out of there quietly before Katlyn could blow a gasket at this lady.

The guys washing carts were nice enough to provide us with some sample bottles of water to tide us over until we got back into Saskatoon. One of the guys chatted with us for a bit and asked us if it took us a while to play. We of course said yes, and in response he asked if it was around 5.5 hours. We said yes, that’s exactly how long it took. He responded by saying “Ya, that’s been our average around here lately”. Here I thought maybe the pace was bad because it was just a hot Saturday afternoon, but apparently it’s common place out there.

Before leaving we poked our heads into the new casino across the parking lot. We don’t really gamble, but wanted to see what it was like inside. Pretty extravagant for a casino out in the middle of nowhere. And it was pretty full too.

All in all it was a pretty good day, even if it was longer than intended. Hey, we didn’t have anything else to do anyway!

So to sum it all up:

Practice facilities: 9/10 – Free range balls and ample putting/chipping greens

Course condition: 9/10 – Immaculate, greens can be subject to noticeable footprints and spike marks because of the high traffic.

Staff: 7/10 - A few bad apples drag down the majority of the good ones.

Food: 7.5/10 – Everything was great, but there are limited choices and lacking facilities right now in the temporary space, so there’s room for improvement.

Pace of Play: 4/10 – Need to space out the tee times a bit more to avoid 5.5 hour rounds.

Difficulty: 8/10 – Five sets of tees make it reasonable for everyone, but challenging at the same time.

Overall Experience: 8/10

Be sure to check out all of our pictures from Dakota Dunes Golf Links.

Have an opinion of your time at Dakota Dunes Golf Links? Let us know in the comments!

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