Only Four Iowa Golf Courses Remain with a Very Unique Trait

For golf lovers, there's nothing better than playing a round on a beautiful Iowa day. When you want to get away, there's no better place than a golf course. They're always quiet spots that provide a wonderful opportunity to catch up with friends as you play 9 or 18 holes. Some days your game is there for you and on other days... well, you prefer to forget those. No matter how bad it gets, just don't act like this guy.

Golf courses definitely come with different degrees of difficulty and the greens can be a real bear. However, if you play at any one of four golf courses in the state of Iowa, you'll get a really big surprise... the greens aren't green grass that is trimmed very short. No, there's no grass at all because the greens are made of sand.

Admittedly, the photo above is not from the Iowa golf courses I speak of. However, the ones below are.

Those photos are from the Wellman Golf Course, along Highway 22, in Washington County. The darker area near the pin is also sand... it's very fine and gets a special oil treatment a few times each golf season.

The Wellman Golf Course, established in 1925, is aware of how rare its course is. It's one of only three golf courses in Iowa that still have sand greens.

The other Iowa 9-hole golf courses with sand greens are in or near small towns. Pierson (population 337 in 2020), about 40-minutes east of Sioux City, is home to the Pierson Golf Course opened in 1946.

Northeast of Scotch Grove (population 365 in 2020), in Jones County, is the par 3 Coon Hunters Golf Course. The 9-hole course also has sand greens.

The fourth and final sand green golf course in Iowa is the Humeston Lakeside Golf Club in Humeston (population 465 in 2020). The town is located in Wayne County in south-central Iowa.

Golf.com says there are actually only approximately 90 9-hole courses with sand greens still open in the entire United States. These two Iowa gems are rare indeed.