Pros:
As the other three all will eventually, Red has all concrete tees with pretty good tee signs, and colorfully marked baskets.
As Red is the oldest course, it is the most polished of the four. The teepads, pin locations and signs are all set and accurate. The fairways are manicured and maintained here, as opposed to gold or white, where there is still much brush-clearing to be done.
Red is probably the most balanced of the four. It offers a nice mix of relatively open and more tightly wooded holes, though woods are in play on every hole to some extent.
This course likes to squeeze you, and give you stretches of trouble. For example, you give have to shoot through an open field, but the pin will be tucked back into a wooded area. Or you may have a sharp hyzer or narrow tunnel shot off the tee, but after that chokepoint it gets easier. Thus, this course will throw challenges at you, but more like a few hurdles on every hole than a maintained tightrope walk like some courses force.
This is nice, as it lets you break down the challenges a piece at a time, especially on the longer holes, where you will probably only throw through one kink in the fairway at a time.
Many baskets are blind off the tee, but odds are you probably saw the basket through the woods while walking down a previous fairway, and thus have some idea of where you're aiming, plus the good signage helps.
Also, because this course is so compact, it has great flow, so you don't spend much time walking. We played this course after Silver, and Red felt like such a relaxing break after 3 hours of abuse. Red is fun without feeling ridiculously hard, though it is still quite technical and challenging.
This course has tons of trees, and several of the holes will have you scratching your head off the tee, including some tough right curving shots.
This course boasts some nice elevation (up or down) on a few holes, and has a tricky thread-the-needle shot over a small creek as well, on top of trees everywhere.
This course also offers a nice mix of long and short. Holes range from several under 300 to a couple over 500ft in length. Deuce opportunities are balanced out by tough 3's, and any hole on this course has the potential to trip you up if you're not careful, as the hole scoring spreads within our group showed.
Several holes were of this mold: Thread a maze of scattered trees on the wide fairway to the pin with bushy shule behind and on either side of it. Each one poses a different puzzle of which gap you want to shape your drive through.
This is a nice, broken-in wooded course with many very interesting holes. Also, it has easily the best drainage of the four courses here, so on a wet day, this is your best bet.
Cons:
Red is relatively flat course, other than the large open hillside that a few holes play on. This limits the course more than anything else, because as far as wooded holes go, it delivers the goods.
This course is amazingly compact, which is impressive considering its length and variety, but also has its downsides. It seems like several holes are almost too close together. As you can often see another fairway through a narrow band of trees, its very feasible that an errant shot could end up shooting through the trees onto another hole, which could potentially be dangerous.
Also, the open hillside that you start in and return through towards the end has several problems. Firstly, you can see several baskets off the tee, so it can be a little confusing to know which one you are shooting at sometimes.
Also, hole 2 curves along the treeline and curves right into the trees past tee 3. Though there are a few trees there, an errant drive right on 2 could hit someone teeing off on 3, which is a big problem. Both holes are great, but perhaps a sign or something downhill from tee 3 doubling as a shield from fairway 2 wouldn't be a bad idea here, for safety.
Navigation gets confusing in one spot. From basket 12, go to your right through the woods to get to tee 13. Its obvious once you find it, just not easy to see through the woods, and because 13 has no sign.
The holes here will challenge you, and this course is a blast to play, perfect for a nice relaxing round, if you want more distance than the white course offers. However, I believe that the designers at Lemon Lake really learned alot with each subsequent course they put in, steadily improving their designs.
Right now, this course is the only one with all concrete tees and a real "finished" feel to it. But, as the other 3 catch up in preparation for Nationals, they will all increasingly outshine this course, IMO.
Other Thoughts:
According to a sign on this course, Matt "Homie" Lovasko, a dearly departed local DG legend, once aced holes 2 & 3 of this course in the same round. That is an amazing homie story. When you are here, ask the locals about him, he lives on through their continual dedication as well as their "homie" shirts and discs. Ask a dozen of them and you will hear as many different stories about homie, all of them good.
Its just something that really stuck with me when we played here, what a wonderful group the locals are, and how they honor their dead friend is very indicative of that. On top of the four wonderful courses here, the locals are what makes Lemon Lake such a special place, truly deserving of hosting Worlds. I would not hesitate to go back here for several days, to play each course several times and hopefully do them justice.