Kristazio on Golf: Review - The Legacy Golf Club, Norwalk Iowa

On last weekends trip to Iowa for some "warmer" golf we were originally going to play Waveland on Frinday and the Legacy on Saturday. Waveland was rained out Friday so we rescheduled that round. On Saturday we awoke to drier conditions but the wind still remained. I told my brother when I looked out our hotel window "The good news is that the rain has stopped. The bad news is that there are white caps on the puddles". I wasn't kidding. The Legacy is located south of Des Moines. After a 20 minute drive from down town we found the course amongst the typical urban sprawl of cookie cutter housing developments and strip malls. The course itself isn't wall to wall with houses, though some do border its edges.

Many people think Iowa is as flat as a pancake but that is not actually true. A lot of Iowa has numerous rolling hills. A lot of the state has more elevation changes than the glacier scraped land of Minnesota. The Legacy club is set amongst some of these rolling hills. I always had wondered what a golf course would look like in the middle of the fields of Iowa, should some farmer decide to sod their corn fields under. Now I know. Legacy was built in 2002 and designed by Jeffrey Brauer, the same architect who created the awesome courses at Giants Ridge and Fortune Bay in Minnesota. I was really excited to play the course since I love his designs that I have played.

The course has large bent grass fairways and fairly large greens. The greens are mostly flat but do have enough undulations to make them a challenge. There is not a lot of water that really comes into play. A couple of carries to par 3s over a pond and creeks that are scattered around the course but shouldn't really come into play unless an errant shot is hit. Hole 2 is a par 4 with a second shot over water to the green, but in general you should not have a lot of balls lost in the drink.

I would like to give a more detailed description of the course and my playing experience, but the windy conditions beat us all to kingdom come. Wearing 5 layers to combat the 40 degree temps doesn't lend itself to a free golf swing. Add the two together and you have a pretty brutal experience that leaves you remembering more about the uncomfortableness than the round of golf you have played. In conditions like we played, it is best to keep your head down and focus on the shot at hand.

I can recount that on hole 14, a 170 par 3 with a full carry over water to the green that three out of four of us in the foursome hit driver off the tee, straight into a headwind and only one made it up on the green. The other two were wet.

The other holes went by in a wind-induced coma blur. I do remember thinking how much I would love to play the course when the weather conditions were better. The layout seemed fair and plenty of room was available on most shots. I really can't comment on the length of the course (just a tad under 7,100 yards fro m the tips) since the wind made the lengths of the holes irrelevant.

The conditions of the course were really good, especially for April 13th. Some of the fairways had some rough patches of slow to grow grass. The greens were still a little rough but they rolled fairly straight, when the ball wasn't being buffeted by winds. Give the course another month and I am sure the conditions would be excellent.

One other comment on the course- the staff. From what I understand the Legacy is a family run business and everyone I encountered was first rate and very friendly. There were no beverage carts but that was due to the weather, I am sure.

Overall the course is one I would defiantly play again. For $52, including cart the golf is a great deal. This would be a $80-90 in Minneapolis. If you are in need of practicing up for Scottish golf or just like to develop a nice wind burn, you would have really liked the conditions we played in. For me, I hope that the next round I play here will be a sunny and calm one.