Forest Park Golf Course – Hawthorne

We played a 5 hour+ round today and it’s a joke how the course is being run currently. We paid $33(which we thought was a good deal) for a hot deal to play this round and when we showed up for our tee time there was 3 other groups waiting to tee off. We teed off over 30 minutes after our tee time. We waited on every hole 10+ minutes just to start playing it. There’s other things that I don’t understand about this beautiful course by those that run it.
1. There’s no water on the course and all the jugs are empty. I know it’s not a covid thing either because no one wears masks inside working so they just want to use that as an excuse. Just seems lazy to not fill them up for customers especially at course that is usually $50+ to play. There was no cart girl either until we saw her parked on Dogwood #8 for 3 groups (she didn’t move after we passed her either). So you can’t even buy drinks if you wanted to and the course was slammed so having no water and no options for people makes zero sense.
2. Beer 6 packs are $22 for domestic beer (most expensive in the area) and they have had only grocery bags to put the beer and ice in for over a year. The whole bag just leaks the entire time and it’s insane to charge that much money and not even order beer bags once in a while. This has been happening for over a year so someone literally doesn’t know how to order more beer bags, I guess? If the person that is in charge of stocking supplies sees this, please stop getting grocery bags from Schnucks and purchase actual cooler bags for your $22 beer so it doesn’t leak everywhere.
3. Please hire a starter to make sure people are playing at a normal pace and playing the correct holes. I have never seen a starter there playing 20+ times over the years. It was a mess this morning just to tee off and it shouldn’t be up to players to figure out if a person making the turn should go ahead of a group that’s been waiting 20 minutes to tee off already.
Bottom line: I love this course but I can’t visit anymore for the prices they charge and the amenities they are lacking for no good reason. They charge way too much money to have simple basic things a course in this price range should have. Also I can’t just be gone for 5-6 hours every time I want to play a round of golf so pace of play needs to improve. Something needs to change or I think more people will realize this and will go to similar courses for the same or less money and get way better service overall.