Bittersweet Golf Club
Rating Snapshot
About
Bittersweet Golf Club in Gurnee, Ill. is ideally situated for a scenic round of golf. The diverse landscape flows seamlessly from lush wetlands to native prairies covered with colorful wildflowers. The layout also winds across a 100-year-old sage meadow and through forests of mature hardwoods, which serve as a home to an abundance of wildlife. Beyond the beautiful scenery, the terrain presents many challenges. The undulating fairways demand accuracy as you hit from multi-tiered tee boxes. Water also comes into play on almost every hole and there's an array of strategically placed bunkers you'll have to avoid. The eighth is the toughest hole on the front nine, a par-4 dogleg right with a lightning fast green. Bittersweet Golf Club's back nine is known for its scenery, which is best displayed on the signature par-5 11th hole, which offers not only a challenge but also a spectacular view from the tee.
| Tee | Par | Length | Rating | Slope |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black | 72 | 6751 yards | 73.3 | 135 |
| Blue | 72 | 6345 yards | 71.4 | 131 |
| White | 72 | 5559 yards | 67.8 | 122 |
| White (W) | 72 | 5559 yards | 72.8 | 128 |
| Red (W) | 72 | 4952 yards | 70.0 | 121 |
| Hole | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | Out | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | In | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Black M: 73.3/137 | 338 | 565 | 196 | 344 | 371 | 148 | 346 | 422 | 516 | 3246 | 369 | 546 | 403 | 200 | 506 | 420 | 421 | 203 | 437 | 3505 | 6751 |
| Blue M: 71.4/133 | 319 | 531 | 169 | 334 | 361 | 126 | 326 | 404 | 485 | 3055 | 340 | 530 | 363 | 183 | 496 | 376 | 409 | 190 | 403 | 3290 | 6345 |
| White M: 67.8/120 W: 73.0/129 | 298 | 490 | 127 | 323 | 234 | 106 | 309 | 328 | 410 | 2625 | 329 | 507 | 319 | 145 | 445 | 341 | 360 | 133 | 355 | 2934 | 5559 |
| Red W: 69.8/122 | 283 | 469 | 93 | 279 | 234 | 76 | 288 | 323 | 402 | 2447 | 241 | 424 | 289 | 115 | 371 | 290 | 327 | 126 | 322 | 2505 | 4952 |
| Handicap | 17 | 1 | 9 | 11 | 7 | 13 | 15 | 3 | 5 | 12 | 2 | 18 | 16 | 10 | 6 | 8 | 14 | 4 | |||
| Par | 4 | 5 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 5 | 36 | 4 | 5 | 4 | 3 | 5 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 4 | 36 | 72 |
| Handicap (W) | 9 | 1 | 17 | 7 | 13 | 15 | 11 | 3 | 5 | 14 | 2 | 12 | 18 | 8 | 10 | 6 | 16 | 4 |
Course Details
Rentals/Services
Practice/Instruction
Policies
Food & Beverage
RestaurantAvailable Facilities
Clubhouse, Banquet FacilitiesAccolades
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Golf Advisor: Top Courses in Illinois (2016 #12)
Reviews
Toughest course
One of the toughest courses I’ve ever played.
Hazards everywhere. They call it a target course….. you better be right on target if you expect a decent round. Narrow fairways add to the many challenges.
Worth the drive.
Just a real nice course. Fair and challenging.
Just fun to play!
Travel 42 miles to play this course and its worth it.
Golfer
Course I’m pretty good shape! Greens super fast. Very fun challenges
Another course just a shadow of itself.
You can see what a nice course this was and could be again. The management company is well known for stripping courses of their personality and beauty. They focus on the number of rounds rather than the course itself. There are tough holes here and lots of long carries to make the fairways. There were several bald spots on the fairways. The cart paths are beat up. The pro shop staff was cold and inattentive. The greens were in pretty good condition and rolled nicely.
Challenging course!
Definitely placement golf. Lots of water hazards and marsh area. Beautiful scenery and tons of wildlife!!
Problems
I was really excited to play Bittersweet for the first time in over a decade. Overall I enjoyed the day. However, my partner and I were disappointed by many things. First, no ball washers? What? C'mon now. Second, they are letting this course go with things like yardage markers and signage. I don't think they even had a marker telling us where the 12th tee box was. You need to label your holes with a basic 300 yard, par 4, and here's the layout stuff. The black tees weren't even in the ground, yet many times the blue tees were where the black tees should have been. What? So what yardage did we actually play out there? No GPS on the carts, plus no yardage markers out on the course left us with mostly blind shots. I mean, c'mon man! This course was hard enough as is without them screwing us over on yardage. Why can't they at least put a red, blue, and white stake for 100, 150, and 200 yards away from center of the green? Just very disappointing. It's sad because they have an interesting, fun, challenging course layout but they have let it go.
Tough course
A very nice challenge.....unfortunately,wayward shots leave you with double bogeys on many holes but if you hit them straight,you’ll find this course a worthy challenge
Slow play on tough track
I typically like to play this course early on a weekend (7am)... Today we went out 9;50 and it was brutally slow so we quit after 14 holes. Groups in front of us had no business playing the Blue tees. This is a tough track, not for beginners or people that are clueless about etiquite.
Frankly, probably my last round here.
Tough But Fair Golf Course in Excellent Condition
Love this golf course. Excellent condition and the greens run very true. Precision is paramount, but I enjoyed the course immensely.
Nice but...
The course was in good shape, not great but not at all chopped up. Greens were in decent shape despite being recently aerated and sanded. Fairways were well watered and lush. My biggest issue was that on about half of the holes, the white and red teaboxes were combined. I would normally play off of the whites and my wife the red. It's not appropriate for the men's and ladies tees to be the same. I switched to the blue tees on the back (the blue tees were way up as well) and that helped but I'm the type of golfer that doesn't believe you should play the championship (blue in this case) tees unless you can back it up. I play to about a 10 handicap. Overall, nice course, nice greens, nice people.
Doug Fuller
Great course love the lay out will be back
For sure
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