Pros:
- 9 Yellow-banded DISCatcher Pros in good condition. All were mounted well.
- 8 modestly sized concrete tees(2 uses the asphalt parking lot). They're level and have good texture.
- 9 wooden posts with the Hole # to mark the tee areas.
- The few clumps of landscaped trees on the property were brought into play on a handful of the holes. They don't do a ton to force lines but those holes are better than the holes without trees.
- Appropriate hole lengths for a rec-intermediate level track. They range from ~165' to ~400'.
- The course always seems to be mowed.
- Free to play.
Cons:
- The land is rather uninteresting. Pretty dang flat and mostly wide open outside of the couple of strips of landscaped trees. No difficulty getting off any tees. The grass isn't irrigated so while it's always mown, it's just kinda scrubby, dusty, and unpleasant.
- Outside of the baskets and tee pads, basic infrastructure is woefully lacking. The short tee posts only have a hole number, no distance(except a few w sharpie!), par or other info to be gleaned. The tee pads, while of nice texture and level pouring, have not been back filled around and are a touch short(particularly for Hole 8 at 400'). No directional aids and there are a couple spots where it isn't apparent which way to go next.
- Located on one of the busier 45mph streets on the West side of Billings, it's not a great atmosphere to enjoy a round.
- Couple-few safety/layout issues, baskets for Holes 4 and 8 are inside of 60' apart so the putting circles overlap. Hole 9's tee is about 40' past Hole 8's basket and also in the nOOb hyzer kill zone of Hole 2. A couple of the fairways play close to each other, Hole 2's green and Holes 3 and 4 are stacked a bit tight.
- Irrigation and cattail ditches are bound to eat some plastic on Holes 1 and 4.
- Not enough variation in hole length. 6 of the 9 holes fall between 230' and 290'. When you don't really have to shape any shots it get fairly monotonous.
Other Thoughts:
It's nice that the church installed a course and allows public play. There aren't any courses in this part of town so it gets some decent use despite being rather low on the quality scale. It's just not a good piece of land for a course and the lack of infrastructure and design/layout flaws knock it down further. I played it once to snap pics and add it to the directory. I played again to get a refresher before reviewing. It's about 6 minutes from my house and my office but the only time I could see playing again would be a quick lunch break round from work. Not too far off of I-90 from the Zoo exit and it's on the way to the X so if you're baggin and have 20 spare minutes it's an easy add on. Otherwise Pioneer and Hilner(Lockwood, just east of town) are the far better local 9-Hole options.
Update: As of late 2021 concrete tees were added. Modestly sized which works for most holes but a touch on the short side for a couple of the drives. Bumped my rating from 1.0 to 1.5.