Corn Fed Course Crawl: Poco Creek Golf Course (Aurora, Nebraska)
- CornFedMike
- May 1
- 7 min read
Updated: May 19
Corn Fed Course Crawl is back, and so is spring. Barely.
Stop # 3 brings us to Poco Creek Golf Course in Aurora, Nebraska, and this one is the first Corn Fed Course Crawl entry of 2026. I only got two courses filmed before winter shut everything down in 2025, so there was a lot of pent-up "let's go play some golf and document it poorly" energy going into this one.
Poco Creek Golf Course Quick Facts
Course: Poco Creek Golf Course (Aurora, Nebraska)
Holes: 9
Par: 35
Yardage: 3,140 yards (Blue) / 2,963 yards (White) / 2,463 yards (Red)
Year Built: 1922 (originally Aurora Country Club)
Bonus: 11,000 sq. ft. artificial turf putting and chipping area next to the clubhouse
A Nebraska Golf Trivia Answer Waiting to Happen
Here's something only a guy who built a Nebraska golf course database can appreciate: Poco Creek is the only regulation golf course in Nebraska that opens with back to back par 3s.
Not counting par 3 only courses. Not counting executive nines. Full regulation golf courses. Poco Creek is the only one in the state that sends you to the tee box on hole # 1 and again on hole # 2 without a par 4 or par 5 in between.
That is... unusual. And kind of painful, honestly, depending on your perspective. I'd rather be hitting driver off the first tee than trying to navigate a 214 yard par 3 with my 5 iron.
First Impressions
The course looks great when you pull up. But honestly, most courses do. I'm a golf nut, I see a maintained stretch of green grass and I'm ready to hand over my credit card.
The defining characteristic of the layout is what's right there in the name: the creek. Poco Creek meanders through the property and shows up on almost every hole. The thing is, it's sneaky about it. On a lot of holes, especially your first time through, you're looking at what appears to be a low spot in the fairway and then you get up to it and oh... there's a creek in there. Parts of it were dry or nearly empty in mid April. Later in the season when it's running full, I suspect it causes a lot more trouble than it did for us.
My brother-in-law found it on # 7. We were able to fish the ball out without falling in, so that's a win.
Signature Holes
Hole # 5: The Par 5 that felt like a Par 4
I'm not sure if normally the white tees are up by the red, but it played like a par 4 for us. There are tees further back that would have made it longer, but they weren't in use when we played it. I thought when I finished I had made bogey with a 5, and I didn't realize until later I had scored a par. After nearly driving it OB, I only had an 8 iron to the green, but a tree got in the way of that plan. Which worked out in my favor, because it's a picturesque approach shot from the fairway over Poco Creek to a long, narrow green.
Hole # 4: Across the Street
You cannot talk about Poco Creek without talking about hole # 4 and the fact that it is literally on the other side of a housing development from the rest of the course.
You finish # 3, and signs direct you cross a road, and suddenly you're standing in a cul-de-sac with houses all around wondering if you took a wrong turn. Once you find the hole, it's a perfectly normal par 4, but the experience of getting there is genuinely surreal, one of those "wait, is this still the golf course?" moments that I did not see coming.
Is the neighborhood inside the golf course, or is the hole inside the neighborhood? I really couldn't tell you. Both answers feel correct.
Trees: A Personal Journey
I am not going to pretend my relationship with the trees at Poco Creek was healthy. If you watch the video, you will definitely see what I'm talking about.
I hit three of them. Not glancing blows. Not "clipped a branch." Full redirects, the kind where the ball comes almost straight down or fires off in a completely new direction.
Hole # 1 tee shot, par 3. Great start.
Hole # 5 second shot. I had already nearly gone out of bounds off the tee, so this was a two disaster hole before I even got to the green.
Hole # 9 drive. A lovely way to close.
And then on # 6 and # 8, I didn't hit the trees exactly. I just ended up standing directly next to the trunks after my drives. Both times I hit punch shots I was genuinely proud of. Both times I still made bogey or worse. One of those "executed perfectly, scored terribly" stretches that golf specializes in.
The # 8 situation especially. I punched out, pitched back over the green, then three putted. That's a lot of creativity for a double bogey.
The Moment of the Round
Hole #7... I'd made a decent chip after leaving my approach short of the green. I had about four feet left for par. I putted it, watched it roll to the edge of the cup and stop. I put my head down. Done. Bogey. Moving on.
As you do in these situations, my brother jumps up and down, showing off his 2 inch vertical and jokingly trying to coax the ball into the hole with a few earth tremors courtesy of his finely tuned temple of a body.
But the ball actually falls in the hole.
I don't know if his jump did it. The video evidence is honestly kind of compelling. It drops right around when his first jump lands. We went absolutely crazy. The working theory is that his extra mass created enough ground vibration to tip it in, and we are sticking with that theory because it's funnier than any other explanation.
That par is going in the books and I'm not answering any further questions about it.
My Round
I shot a 44 on the par 35 layout from the white tees. Nine over, aka "bogey golf". Not my finest work, but completely on brand. The scorecard tells an interesting story about all my bogeys though:
1 bogey. 4 pars. 4 double bogeys.
That's technically bogey golf by average, except it wasn't distributed anything like bogey golf. The doubles were clustered at the start and finish: holes 1 and 2 to open, holes 8 and 9 to close. The middle of the round I was actually playing decent golf. The par on # 5 in particular felt like a miracle. I nearly went out of bounds off the tee, hit a tree on my second shot, got a lucky bounce into the fairway, hit a dead straight shot over the green, chipped nicely, and tapped in. I thought it was a bogey until I looked at the scorecard. Par. I'll take it.
The one bogey, on # 6, might be the shot I'm most proud of from the whole round. My ball was sitting right in front of a massive root, leaning against a tree. I punched it onto the green anyway. ...And then I three putted, because that's what I do.
The Clubhouse Situation
Poco Creek has a nice, new clubhouse opened in 2022 that does double duty as a course facility and community event space. There's also a big artificial turf putting and chipping area out front that looks great but does nothing to prep you for the speed of the actual greens.
I say all of this because when we showed up, the clubhouse was closed for a private event.
Which, fine. Totally reasonable. Except the event hadn't started yet. So we had a brand new, clearly nice, totally empty clubhouse that we were not allowed to enter. We paid and ordered food through an exterior window.
I have no real complaint here. They were upfront about it, it worked out fine, and the food came through the window without incident. But it was a vibe. Picture a nice restaurant where you can see all the empty tables through the glass and they're making you eat on the sidewalk. That's the energy. Not a knock on the course. Just a funny situation. Now if it were 95 degrees out, I might have been a little more annoyed at being locked out of the air conditioning, but it was a pleasant mid 70s day.
The YouTube Video
The companion video covers all nine holes shot by shot, includes the drone footage of the course, and most importantly has the # 7 brother jump moment on camera. Watch it. You'll see exactly what I mean.
Watch the video here:
Final Thoughts
Poco Creek is a legitimately good nine hole course. It has real character: the creek, the trees, the back to back par 3 opener, the hole that teleports you across a neighborhood. It's been around since 1922 and the new clubhouse gives it a fresh layer on top of all that history.
The course rewards a second visit more than most. Knowing where the creek actually is, which low spots have water in them, where the trees are positioned... all of that changes how you play it. We were navigating blind and still had a great time. But we will be back!
If you're coming through the Aurora area, Poco Creek is definitely worth the stop.
See all the courses we have visited so far on the Corn Fed Course Crawl page.
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