Glen Oaks Country Club

Detailed description of Glen Oaks Country Club

Glen Oaks Country Club, is a Private, 18 hole golf course located in West Des Moines, Iowa.

Glen Oaks Country Club first opened for play in 1994. The course was designed by Tom Fazio.

Although located in West Des Moines, the course is close to downtown Des Moines. and as I walked the property I could see it had great potential. The property had on which the course was built had several distinct environments, one of which was an old corn field.  But it also had dips and hollows and several forested areas. The elevation changes were quite strong. The golf course possesses a great deal of movement and flows through the property in all different directions, taken its cues from the flow of the land rather than from a static plan from the drawing board. There were two spring-fed creeks and five or six ponds on the site that were tied into several holes.

The course is routed into the trees and alongside the creeks and ponds, which add to the golfing interest. Some of the holes cross streams, others play alongside them and over parts of lakes. This course has four holes with the Scottish links-style in mind.  The other fourteen holes have characteristics of a Midwestern design.  The course was built on a semi-rolling terrain and has numerous mature trees lining the fairways.

Early farmers had collected stones from the ground to clear the way for planting crops and had piled them alongside the fields in crude walls as boundaries for different crops. These stone wall boundaries now frame some of the golf holes.

Black tees: par-71, 6,961 yards, 74.9 / 142
Green tees: par-71, 6,592 yards, 72.9 / 138
White tees: par-71, 6,300 yards, 70.2 / 134
Blue tees: par-71, 5,403 yards, 66.9 / 120
Gold tees: par-71, 4,761 yards, 67.3 / 111