Twin Lakes Golf Club, Westmont, IL

I just took up golf again after a 15 year hiatus raising my kids. Much to my delight, my wife asked for clubs last Christmas and took lessons this spring and played in a scramble league. While we are not good golfers, by any means, our game is improving. After playing many rounds at Green Meadows and Zigfield Troy (which are great courses for beginners), we stumbled on Twin Lakes.

It is a short course, but what we like is that is has some challenging greens due to their slope and bunkers. While 6 of the holes are par threes, a few of these play long like number 7 which has a creek through the fairway. Hole number 4 is challenging as you need to hit it 130-150 yards over a pond (from the white tees). On Saturday, I hit the water, but on Sunday I greened it.

It's very relaxed. The other golfers were friendly - either beginners like us or don't play a lot. We got a bit backed up on Sunday, so a group of three was behind us and didn't mind my awful tee shot on the 8th. They even helped us find my wife's tee shot on that same hole.

As I understand it, the course is under new management. We met the manager on Sunday and he was really nice. He said that they've been working hard to improve the course. It's in really great shape. Staff is friendly and the beer cart guy stops his cart as you address the ball. Then he stays a good distance from you to avoid disrupting your play, but comes right away if you want to buy something.

Twin Lakes is a nice course for the novice golfer or a golfer that wants to get in a low key round of 9 holes in a short period of time.