In the park-like, lightly wooded grounds surrounding the athletic facilities on Hanover's campus, you'll find possibly the longest nine-hole course in Indiana. It's unusual for a niner to boast half its holes over 500', but these are each actually fun and interesting, from the tree-row 2nd (bending blind to the right with rough to punish you on that side, and a roadway left to keep you honest), through the 5th (with a tree gap to choose halfway out on this right curving line), the cool 'water tower lane' dogleg right 6th, to the fairly impressive 8th (which bends right around pines and a mando all the way around the baseball outfield fence). Writing that out, it just occurred to me that these are all left to right, and lengthy, but my rhbh-only game still managed to play them acceptably. The shorter, more reachable holes actually provide more variety.

Tees are made up of well-draining, large, hog-slat concrete. Signage is really pretty good (though some have different hole distances than their map), and all 10 baskets (the practice basket is just south of the fraternity house and sports facility parking lot just west of 'Scenic Drive) are DD Veterans in red and blue. Speaking of scenic, if you drive into campus from the north, you really had a great chance to view the woods, rock outcroppings and cliffs of the nature preserve on your way in!

The disc golf course overall covers a generous amount of well-maintained campus grounds, and 8 out of 9 holes play very safely separated from other activities. The course presents a good amount of fun, and a reasonable challenge for skill levels intermediate and above. My favorite hole was 3, which glides slightly downslope and requires a flex rhbh, which I surprised myself by getting all the way down 384', pin high for a deuce!

I find it interesting that they chose to only use grounds already being maintained by the campus, and didn't avail themselves of the opportunity to work into the glorious woods for some more technical shot-shaping. Anything right of hole 6 would be better than what they've done to transition back south: hole 7 plays as a dogleg left toward the baseball batting cage and bullpen, and directly over a picnic bench and obvious gathering area under the cluster of trees at the bend. Big design no-no for me. In addition, there are three or four locations where they pretty much HAD to use mandos (for instance, to protect 2's tee, the driveway to the right on 9, and on 6 to keep folks from trying the right side over the ball field). The problem with mandos as a design necessity is that they can just as easily be ignored.

Overall, the course seems a little 'upscaled', as if the Frat house there might just be the 'Jocks', and the course turned out to be a little bit of a macho fest. But I could have been one of those guys myself. Way back when the world was new, I actually had an invitation to try out for the Hanover football team. But life takes other twists and turns…