For the price of a bucket of balls, you can walk 18 here in under three hours — yes, really. Welcome back to The Loop. Today we’re in Carson, exploring a course you’ve probably driven past a dozen times and wondered, “What does it cost to play there?”

A landfill turned local legend

Links at Victoria sits just off the 405 on what used to be a landfill before it was reshaped into a full par-72 layout back in the ’60s. Today, it’s a no-frills, get-your-reps-in kind of track — a massive driving range lit for day or night sessions, plus expansive chipping and putting areas that stay surprisingly busy.

Sounds like it has everything you could ever want in a course. There must be a catch, right?

Right.

The yardage is real… and so is the hardpan

Stretching from roughly 5,000 to nearly 6,800 yards, this place comes with a disclaimer: tee boxes are flat, greens exceed expectations, but the “fairways” — well, calling them fairways is generous. From many tee boxes, it looks more like tightly packed earth than traditional short grass.

A local might put it like this:

“Fairways? Depends how you define fairway.”

There’s a lot of space between tee and green, but it’s certainly more dirt than grass. The upside? You’ll hit some bombs. The balls will keep rolling. The downside? You’ll spend some time locating them — natural hazards and native areas love claiming a ProV1 or two.

Find grass? Proceed like normal.

Find hardpan? Play it as it lies.

Simple rules. Chaotic outcomes.

Some may call it unfinished. We’ll call it charm.

Pristine around the green

Fairway bunkers tend to be gritty and shallow. Greenside bunkers? Soft and feathery, surprisingly refined for a muni born from a landfill. The greens themselves roll true with modest breaks — and if you ignore the fairway situation for a moment, you might even call them… pure.

The play on and around the greens make you think you’re at a well-kept, neatly groomed, maybe even premium municipal course. By the next hole, you’re reminded… there are no fairways.

A finish framed by freeways and blimps

The closing stretch, holes 14–18, runs parallel to the freeway with the Goodyear blimp hovering like a permanent gallery. It’s a uniquely SoCal finish — loud, quirky, confident.

A course you’ve seen from the 405 a hundred times, a price that sounds too good to be real, a loop worth taking.

Even for lacking an essential piece of the golf course, consider this a $25 well-spent. You’ve got to see it to believe it, and we’d urge you to go at least once.

Welcome to Links at Victoria.

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