Worth a Little More Green

Road Trip

Tired of struggling to find a tee time in Los Angeles, then, if you do, playing 5 1/2-hour rounds on the weekend? If you don’t mind getting behind the wheel for a while, there are plenty of courses in surrounding counties where tee times are available and the golf is worth the drive. Here’s a look at some of those courses:

EAGLE GLEN GOLF CLUB

The drive: About 54 miles from downtown L.A.

Address: 1800 Eagle Glen Parkway, Corona.

Phone: (909) 272-4653.

Rates: $75-$100 (cart included).

Overview: Eagle Glen is a little more expensive than most public courses in the Inland Empire, but Troon Golf, which manages the club along with about 140 other high-end properties around the world, knows how to keep a layout in immaculate condition and how to dress up everything surrounding it.

Much of the course sits next to the Cleveland National Forest, some of it abuts a new housing development, but all of it winds intriguingly through canyons and up and down hills that keep the course from ever becoming boring. There’s not a lot of tree trouble, but that doesn’t mean there’s anything easy about the layout. There are more than 100 bunkers, filled with what’s called “Augusta white” sand; it’s consistent, white enough to leave you seeing spots if the sun is bright, and extremely playable around the greens.

The fairways, for the most part, offer generous landing areas; few of the par-fours resemble others; the par-fives offer plenty of risk-reward and the par-threes offer plenty of risk, period. They’re not excessively long, ranging from 166 to 203 yards from the back tees, but you need to hit the shots to the right spots.

You’ll find quick, very true bentgrass greens, but they’re firm, so your longer shots aren’t going to drop and stop.

Four tees range from 4,998 yards to 6,930. The gold tees, at 6,290, offer plenty of challenge for the mid- to low-handicapper.

Free tip: Keep an eye on the course’s Web site, eagleglengc.com, for promotional deals. The $75 daily and $100 weekend fees are a little steep, but we played on a Tuesday in March for a more reasonable $50, with free sandwich to boot.

Nice touches: Each player is given a warmup bucket of range balls, a divot repair tool and a free yardage guide, a big help on the first visit to the course.

Snapshot to remember: Several elevated tees (up to 400 feet of elevation changes) provide views of the San Bernardino and San Gorgonio mountain ranges, and from No. 3, the snowcapped peaks of the San Jacinto Mountains the day we played looked like Kilimanjaro rising out of the plains of Tanzania ... well, you could see them, anyway.

-- Mike James