The name "Big Brother" is really fitting, since that's what this is: a bigger, uglier and meaner version of the classic course. It has more of everything: more wooded holes, more technical shots, tighter tunnels, more difficult pin placements, longer holes, more elevation changes, the list goes on and on.
The concrete tee pad, signage, and flow on this course is up to the same standards as the Classic course, and better in some ways. The front of the short (dirt) tee on every hole is marked with a white pole, and a section of log painted yellow, at a location marked on the tee maps, and easy to spot as you walk the hole. Like classic course, baskets in great shape, double layer of chains on all. Lots of work went into carving these holes and making them playable, without overgrooming them and ruining the challenge of the tightly wooded tunnels. Just right.
This course is much less forgiving than the Rec course, with more specific efforts made to crank up the difficulty level. To contrast, many of the tight tunnel shots on the Classic course have only a single line of trees on one side separating the fairway from an open field. Thus, if you shank through the trees on that side, your second shot isnt really bad at all. In Big Brother, the tightly wooded holes have thick woods on both sides, and a downward slope through the woods on at least one side. Now instead of an open field, errant shots are punished with rollaways through the trees, and tough escape shots to recover.
Big Bro is bursting at the seams with creative holes and basket placements. It has an elevated basket, mounted to the top of a large stump. It has many steep, long hills for your disc to roll down. It will force you to make decisions off the tee box, and missed putts are often a two stroke swing, thanks to rollaways and tightly guarded pins: in the woods protected by trees, in the open protected by brutal winds. One hole has a giant tree branch growing sideways all the way across the fairway, about 8 ft off the ground, that you must navigate over or under to reach a blind downhill basket hidden in the woods off the side of the fairway. This course will really stretch you.
This course has the most overall elevation in play I've ever seen on such a wooded course. Some mountain courses like Whistler DGC in Canada have more drastic elevation changes on some shots, and many courses have more woods, but this course combines uniquely shaped terrain with tight, tight woods, AND distance, for a challenging and fun experience. Its Spring Valley DGC set on rolling hills. It's a better-maintained, longer Kaposia. It does with elevation what Blue Ribbon Pines does with trees. This course has some of the hardest and most interesting open holes I've ever played. Usually I'm not a fan of wide open holes, but the elevation changes and wind here really add to the challenge and make even the open holes anything but vanilla.
Some courses just make the holes really long, and call themselves championship courses, but one of the great things about Big Brother is that its both long and very technical. Every hole throws several things at you, usually in all arenas, from the moment you tee off to the moment the disc settles in the bottom of the chains (and you breathe a sigh of relief).
Though this is the hardest and longest course I have ever played, and I only managed pars on three holes after two consecutive rounds, I really enjoyed playing this course, and would not hesitate to go back. The course design is so devilishly clever down to the minute details, and it shows. The locals I played with were quite good, and the course found countless different ways to punish every one of us throughout the round, even the ones who scored well.
Some courses are not that fun to play, and you might score poorly on them without the course being all that creative or hard: maybe just impossibly wooded, stupidly long, or poorly designed. Some courses are very difficult, yet probably not that fun for people who throw less than 400ft. Most courses fall into the fairly easy to reasonably challenging range, and are fun for average players, yet the scratch local players will go around parking every hole for scores like -12 or -16. Big Brother manages to be a truly difficult championship course, yet still fun for average joes like me. The course record on Big Brother currently stands at one under par, after over a year in the ground and several tournaments. Courses like this are the future of the sport.
There is no filler on this course, and the variety of holes here, from extremely wooded to open, is much more than I have experienced on anywhere else. It will challenge you and get you to think about your game in so many ways. For me, this course was an excellent workshop from start to finish, making it abundantly clear what areas of my game I need to improve upon. And I loved every minute of it.
If you are ever remotely near this course, unless you're a beginner, no excuses, this is a MUST PLAY. Better yet, pack a lunch and set aside a day to play this course several times. The experience will blow your mind.
This course has several hilltop views that are just stunning. It feels like you can see all of Wisconsin from up there.