River Birch Golf Course

Star sits in the Treasure Valley, the broad agricultural flatland west of Boise where the Boise River winds through fields and subdivisions before merging with the Snake. It's a fast-growing corner of southwestern Idaho — one of the fastest-growing regions in the country over the past decade — and the golf here tends to be open, sunny, and played against a backdrop of distant high desert ridgelines with the Owyhee Mountains visible to the south on a clear day.

River Birch fits the character of this valley landscape: a public, everyday course serving a community that has grown dramatically around it. The name nods to the riparian vegetation that follows watercourses through this otherwise arid terrain — the kind of cottonwoods and birches that line irrigation ditches and river banks and give the valley its pockets of shade and greenery.

The par of 73 suggests at least 1 par 5 beyond the standard complement, giving higher-handicap players a few extra birdie opportunities while keeping the round accessible and unhurried. This is local golf at its most straightforward.