Photo by Aidan Bradley

La Purisima is one of the tougher Santa Barbara, California golf courses you can play.

If your next California golf vacation takes you to or through Santa Barbara County, be sure to stop and play La Purisima Golf Course. You simply will not find a better Santa Barbara golf course to play for less than $100 (green fees range from $50-$91).

With a 75.6 stroke average and 143 slope rating from the tips, you probably won't find a more challenging one, either, a fact the course isn't shy about promoting on its website, where the question is posed: "Can you handle playing...La Piranha?" (its nickname given by the locals).

Yes, this former site of LPGA and PGA Tour Qualifying tournaments has teeth...big ones.

Funny though, the sharpest among them is not the work of architects Kenneth Hume Hunter, Jr., and Robert Muir Graves. While their long and hilly design is full of sidehill lies (and the awkward stances that come with them) and well-bunkered, lightening-fast greens, it's Mother Nature's seemingly unrelenting wind whipping across this largely exposed layout that often provides the biggest bite.

Our best advice to avoid the game-gouging gusts, which commonly blow at 30 mph, is to arrange an early tee time, before they kick up. And here's another tip: do not try to reach the green on the monstrous, 606-yard, par five, 12th hole with anything less than three well-planned and well-played shots.

After a forced, over-lake carry from the tee, a right-side stream imperils the subsequent landing areas, which constrict the closer one approaches the green. Trees also infringe from the right, threatening to block out entry shots. If that doesn't get your pulse pumping, check to see if you have one.

One other thing that makes La Purisima unique among Santa Barbara, California golf courses is that it's not actually in Santa Barbara proper, but about an hour northwest on highway 246. We think it's well worth the drive.

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