Clinton Hills is a new for 2020 18-hole course in the metro east region of St. Louis. This course is one of three local disc golf courses to be installed on golf courses in the St. Louis area in the past few years, and provides plenty of open shot opportunities while utilizing trees and other obstacles throughout the plot of land.

Clinton Hill's location is in Swansea, Illinois, and is one of 4 courses in Swansea and Belleville. B.I.G, Citizens, and Bicentennial are all within 4 miles of Clinton Hills, making it easy to play a few courses within a short amount of time if you want to hop around. Other options like Mascoutah and Woodland Chains aren't too far away either. Clinton Hills is also just a couple of minutes off of Route 159, making for plenty of food and gas options not far from the course. Van Man Discs, one of two pro shops in the St. Louis area, is located on site and provides great disc selection and customer service. There's also a restaurant, Fletchers, on site as well.

Park Amenities at Clinton Hills aren't as robust as your typical city park. Now known as the Swansea Clinton Hills Conservation Park, the main focus of the park is land restoration. In addition to disc golf, the old cart paths now serve as paths for local walkers and bikers. At least some parts of the land are also being used to provide space for more wildflowers and other native plants. There is also space utilized for outdoor learning spaces for the community. The lakes on site are also available for catch and release fishing. In terms of other infrastructure, the parking lot provides ample spaces as a result of it formerly serving both the old golf course as well as other businesses, and there is a shelter and bathroom next to the lot for park-goers as well.

Course Equipment is all fresh and in great shape. The course sports white and blue Dynamic Veteran baskets that stand out in the park and catch discs well. The course has newly installed turf tee pads that are nice, level, and feel good to throw off of. Additional mulch will be put around these pads shortly. The tee signs are well done overall, providing pars, pin distances, and a graphic of each hole to not pin locations and OB locations. There's also a larger course map at the parking lot, located on the far side of the bathroom next to the path that leads to hole 1. It's a little out of the way, but there's a practice pad by Van Man Discs with a nice green if you want to warm up before your round. It also sounds like golf carts could be an option in the future as well.

Course Design at Clinton Hills focuses primarily on open shots off the tee that require accurate placement to either set up for your second shot or birdie opportunity. The holes at Clinton Hills provide a nice mix of obstacles around the fairways and greens, allowing opportunities for advanced players to push down fairways and giving newer players a comfortable number of obstacles to navigate with minimal risk of lost discs. There aren't many clusters of trees on the section of the property allotted to the course designers, but there's enough tree coverage and elevation around to make for some fun holes of disc golf.

There's a decent amount of variety at Clinton Hills when considering a number of factors. There're some good moments of elevation that help elevate the layout of many holes. There're uphill shots on 7, 9, and especially 11, and downhill shots on 5, 8, 13, and 17. While the course is overall very open, there is some shot shaping required on this course. Holes 2 and 9 both end to the left, while hole 7 is a tough uphill shot that ends to the right behind a large tree. Most of the other holes are open enough for either forehand or backhand dominant players to be able to throw their preferred shot, with certain trees playing a factor when it comes to how much angle you put on your line. The course has a good mix of distances used, ranging from par 3s as short as 269ft. to the par 5 on hole 5 at 931ft when in the long placement. While not everyone will be able to throw far enough for a birdie on every hole, par should be attainable on every hole for a wide range of skill levels. While most of the holes are open, hole 9 provides something different with its left turning tunnel shot to set up to the green up the hill. Miss your landing zone here, and you'll regret it.

Course Accessibility and Difficulty are accessible to a wide range of players. While newer players might find some of the hole distances daunting, there isn't a lot of places to lose a disc, and shorter drives might avoid obstacles that longer drives will need to avoid. Intermediate players will be able to challenge for scores under par, especially with the shorter pins. This course, while having some hills, is pretty accessible in terms of terrain as well, a benefit of the ball golf history of the land. Cart users will be at home here, as this is one of the most cart friendly 18-hole courses you will find anywhere.

Course Highlights - Hole 5 feels obvious; nice and open, with the creek and cart path coming into play as you try to place your first and second shots. I found hole 13 to be very fun with the large downhill slope, with the creek and path on the left being there to punish hard fades. Hole 18 is a nice finishing hole, with the lake on the left and path on the right. This isn't anywhere near the longest hole, but it's probably the most intimidating.

Variety could be found to be lacking depending on your skill level. This seems like a course where the farther you throw, the more variety in shot shaping there is. For many intermediate throwers such as myself, you are not likely to be swayed into throwing a certain shot type on most of the holes. If you're a backhand favoring player, you'll be set to throw the on most holes, and the same goes for forehand players. This is likely a consequence of how open the property is as a whole, but it would have been nice to see more holes with either a fairway that turns, or at least with enough obstacles to heavily encourage a particular line. If you're someone who likes technical courses, you won't find as much of that here, as a large percentage of players probably don't throw far enough for the obstacles to truly effect the line they would typically take.

There are some signage related matters that could be improved here. The signs do not include a way to show which pin is currently in use. While you can see the pin from the tee on many holes, there are also holes where you can't immediately see or tell which pin the basket is in. I think having a way to show this would be a nice touch, whether that be a screw in the post or something else. Also, while I didn't find navigation to be that difficult, I think having the location to the next tee shown somewhere would also be a nice addition, as there are many spots on the course where multiple tees and pins are visible. This can be on the signs, near the pins, or even additional signs or arrows. More permanent signage noting the direction to hole 1 would probably be appreciated by newer players as well, as it's a little bit of a walk from the parking lot. To find hole 1, go down the path next to the course map and pass the right side of the lake. Hole 1 will be to the left at the top of the hill.

Interaction with other park uses also comes into play on this course, that being mainly with the paths around the property. This park gets a lot of foot traffic on the paths, and many paths go along or through fairways. Make sure you're being vigilant and yielding to other park-goers. There's isn't any spot on the course with blind shots across or by paths, so you should be able to spot park-goers ahead of time when this is a factor.

Lack of shade will likely make this course brutal in the dog days of Summer. This course may be a good one to hit in the mornings or evenings more in July through September, given the heat and humidity St. Louis gets.

Overall, Clinton Hills is a fun and open course, and a welcome addition to the collection of courses in the Metro East. There's been a number of courses installed in the last decade on that side of the Mississippi, with Clinton Hills looking like one of the stronger additions. The playability of this course makes it a great option for a variety of skills levels, and also provides a something different from the woods at Bicentennial or the shorter park style holes at Citizens and East End.

Check out Van Man Discs if they are open during your visit to the property. They're super friendly and will help you find the disc you want, including letting you throw a selection of discs set aside for testing. If you're a local, you should make time to play this course. It's not too far from I-64, so if you're driving into or from St. Louis, it's not a bad detour. Combine it with any of the Belleville courses for a nice day of golf.

It'll be nice to see how this course ages overtime, seeing as this is still a young conservation area. It sounds like the folks who oversee the course aspire for big tournaments here in the near future, and it's not hard to imagine that happening. There's nowhere for this course to go but up, and I look forward to playing this course more in the near future.

*Edited to reflect course updates.

One of the most fun courses I have played. Built on an old golf course turned conservation park, the grounds are beautiful and extremely well kept. The course plays around several small ponds and up a down a creek valley. Water comes into play on holes 1, 2, 5, 6 and 18.

Being an old golf course, there is a lot of room to air out some shots. That being said, the course uses the available terrain and obstacles well. Most baskets are guarded in some way by trees or bushes. There is a lot of relief on the course, and it is used really well for some great up and downhill shots. It really exposed how bad I am at throwing uphill. Two pin positions on each hole, a long and a short, and nice new tee signs with map and distance. It would be nice if there was an indication on tee sign of what position the pin is in, as there are at least two shots where you can't see the baskets from the tee, and have to guess on which position it is in.

Hole 5 is the signature hole to me, a huge 900+ foot par 5. Tee shot is downhill about 600' to the creek, then another 300 steeply uphill to the basket. Depending on your drive you will have to decide whether or not to get over the creek in two or two layup short.

Hole 9 is the only wooded hole. It is a tough par 4 with a sharp left dogleg up a steep slope to a guarded basket. Lots of rough on the right side.

Hole 13 is an interesting hole that plays across a hill that slopes steeply down right to left. Not to many obstacles to work around, but an interesting use of elevation regardless.

Hole 18 is signature runner up. The initial throw is across the pond, with the pond running along the entire left side. Ample opportunity to loose a disc if you let it fade out too hard.

The baskets are brand new white and blue Dynamic Disc Veteran baskets. They are in excellent condition and really easy to spot on the course.

Navigation is not too difficult, but arrows pointing to the next tee would be a welcome addition. There wasn't an overall course map that I saw, and I did use U-Disc to navigate a bit.

Turf teepads have been installed on every hole. These do the trick and are an improvement over the natural teepads, but I personally prefer concrete pads.

Shot variety. I found myself throwing almost the same drive on many of the holes. While most of the baskets are guarded, many of those obstacles are located near the basket with an open fairway approach. I don't have a ton of distance (I max out at about 330'), so I found myself being able to throw essentially straight at the basket as hard as I could without needing to shape my shots around anything until the approach. Many of the holes are in the 400' range, so people with bigger arms will need to consider shot shaping more than me.

This isn't a huge concern, but this is a multi-use park that gets a decent amount of walkers. I have found myself needing to wait on the same group of walkers multiple times as the paths wind through the holes.

The times I have been to this course have been cloudy, but I imagine that the sun could get pretty brutal on hot days, and many holes will not have much relief from it.

There is a disc golf store on site with a good selection of several different manufacturors. They also have water available in the store. There is also a restaurant on the property.

I seriously enjoy playing this course. There are many other courses closer to me, but the drive to Swansea is well worth it. I plan on updating my review as improvements are made.

Shorter pins are in on most holes. This is a place that will hold big tourneys in the future. So much space for parking, a crowd, a possible another 18 in the same park in the future, challenging layout, chance to air it out but walking paths and lakes define most holes. A restaurant
and a disc golf pro shop located by the practice basket. Turf pads

They are working to complete the tees with some mulch.

Beautiful layout, beautiful terrain. Great layout and design by Eric.

No tee signs, no tee pads (not even natural tee pads) tee sign stakes missing from most holes.

This will eventually be an awesome course, however, unless you are okay with guessing where the tee pad should be based on map only it's not even worth visiting. When the stakes were in place and at least #'d it would have been manageable as newer courses usually begin with natural tee pads. People have either removed them, disrespected them, neglected them, what have you.