Lake 16 Golf Course | Kimball Golf Course

Detailed description of Lake 16 Golf Course | Kimball Golf Course

Lake 16 Golf Course, also known as Kimball Golf Course is a public 9-hole golf course located near Kimball, South Dakota.

Th course first opened for play in 1965.

The following was written by Luke Hagen, www.mitchellrepublic.com

Situated along its namesake lake near the intersection of Highway 45 and Interstate 90 between Kimball and White Lake, the par-34 Lake 16 Golf Course aka Kimball Golf Course is a sand-green golf course. It's a throw back to another era.

With no irrigation, a clubhouse that's locked more often than it's open and no place to rent a golf cart or buy a beer, Lake 16's isn't your typical golf course. It isn't recognized by the South Dakota Golf Association.

And anyone who hopes to enjoy a beverage on the course better bring it with them.

But the course has its advantages.

"You don't have to wait on people here," Kelly Thomas said during league night Wednesday. "The sand greens don't bother me at all. You just all take turns raking."

Rules don't stray too far from those on more traditional courses. The main exception, of course, is putting.

Upon reaching a green, golfers take a heavy metal rake and comb a straight line across the length of the sand. The rake is then flipped over to a smooth side and used to flatten out a sand path that resembles freshly leveled and wet cement.

Cups are plugged during the raking process, keeping sand from filling the hole.

After the plug is pulled, each golfer places his ball at varying distances from the cup -- depending on how far their approach shot landed on the green -- on that single, smooth-sand path. When each golfer gets within a club's length of the cup, the hole plug is replaced and the entire green is re-combed in spiral fashion.

Dakota Wesleyan golf coach Adam Anderson played at Lake 16 as a kid. He went on to play collegiately at Notre Dame, and has played some of the nation's best, most beautiful, courses.

Yet Anderson still has a spot in his heart for Lake 16.

"I think it's really good that we still have one of these sand-green courses in the area. As our golf heritage, it's important to see that we have sand-green golf courses and what they've done as far as getting golf as far as it is in the state.