Grand Marais Golf Course, East Saint Louis, IL

The course has been under new management for about two years and the below comments no longer apply. Tee boxes, fairways and greens are in terrific shape and well kept. First cut rough is only a couple of inches high, but beware of thick rough around lateral water hazards as you are unlikely to find any ball that strays therein. Both the scorecard and the course maps on this site are out of date, but the scorecard provided at the course gives individual hole maps with key distances and a place to capture your detailed stats. Grand Marais is once again an excellent value.

Along with some friends, I just played this course last week. Based on images from the Internet, the course looked fabulous. The course is long, seemed challenging and is surrounded by water. We were excited to play a different course in our surrounding area.

As soon as we arrived to the first green, we figured out why it only cost us $25 each. The weeds were overgrowing the greens actually making us relocate our balls in order to putt. The following holes did not improve. We had a hard time determining the difference between the fairway and rough was due to the equal heights and the tee boxes weren't cut. There were several holes when I didn't even use a tee...the grass was high enough to hit it off the deck. We were losing balls in the fairway if that gives you any indication on the grass length. If you were several inches off the fringe…you were literally chipping from 8” rough.

I think the funniest part about the day is on the turn, we went to the clubhouse to get some water (because there was NONE on the course). When management asked us how we liked the course, I made a recommendation about cutting the fairways and providing water...he had the audacity to tell me "we aren't worried about that...our @$!*% is tight...dog". I kid you not. As we started the back side, there was a party in the park and somebody had a stereo system that resonated all the way to the course. So for 9 holes, we had to listen to music that was not part of our MP3 collection. Really...have you ever golfed with rap music playing in the background?

Will I ever play this course again...probably not. The course needs serious landscaping maintenance, the staff could be a little more receptive to constructive criticism and it just left a bad taste in my mouth (with no water to wash it down). Save your money and play a real course like Clinton Hills in Swansea.