McKenzie is a fun, challenging course that will test your accuracy in some spots, and your distance in others. It's located in a nice park, with easy access from the local highway. Hole 1 plays along one of the creeks that borders the course, and you can get into trouble if you cut it too close to the trees.
From there, you go up the hill to tee off back down towards the same creek, and in true H.B Clark fashion, there is a tree right in front of the tee pad that will force you to go left or right.
3 tees off from the creek, and goes up and over the big hill to a blind basket that's protected by a few big trees.
4 goes back up the hill, with a window shot to get you out and over.
5 is a longish hole with a tee pad placed on top of the hill, a few tight gaps at the tree line (that's probably 200' away) as your way into the basket, which is at the bottom near the other creek that borders the course. Tough little hole, especially if you miss the gaps!
6 throws up and over a hill to yet another blind basket, is along the creek with trees bordering the left side, and a smallish window to get through to the basket that will play downhill and to the left.
7 goes uphill, through another small gap that's 150' or so from the pad, then dog legs right to a basket that's on the side of a slight hill. The second round we played, half of our card went back up fairway 6 and had better shots than the rest of us who took the fairway. I don't know if this route will be open in the summer, and for a tourney, i could see mandos in place for safety.
8 plays back up the big hill with another set of really tight gaps to get through to get back to the top of the hill where the basket sits, mostly unguarded.
9 is a tough, right hand turning hole that has a barrier about 200' away of thickets, trees and bushes. The first 200 is all field, but if your drive is off, you're in trouble!
10 plays up another hill, towards the big water tower. The gravel road is casual, thankfully, because pretty much the whole card landed on the road! Not too hard, but still requires precision.
Now, you get to hole 11, scratch your head, look in your bag for a remote control disc, realize you don't have one, and throw a midrange off the pad just to try to get to the 'landing zone' that's in the middle of the 'fairway'. Yup, it's a booger of a hole. Lots of trees, tight gaps, slight downhill to a slight uphill, and you don't get out of the woods until you're about 30' from the basket. Really tough, and i can't imagine it in the summer. PHEW!
12 is a probably 90 degree dog leg right, with the turn coming on really quick. We tried everything - rollers, thumbers, annie (RHBH), etc. They all pretty much gave each player the same approach, just from a different spot. Best thing to do here is walk it, and figure out where you want to land.
13 is another story altogether. Very tight, uphill, winding hole with lots of trees, OB fence around the water tower up near the basket, and lots of "hmmmm what am i going to do now??" in your head. One of the guys on my card made it up to the hedgerow that's between the tower and the faiway, and managed a thumber up and over all of it for an easy 3. But, it takes landing in a certain spot and a really strong thumb game to pull that off. It's a really hard hole, for any skill level, in my opinion.
14 gets you back in the open, with a long look downhill through somewhat sparse trees (maybe 20 on the entire area, which seems wide open after 11 and 13). Pretty cool run and it's park-able if you have a solid drive.
15 plays over the creek to a downhill basket guarded by a huge tree. Fun shot and cool hole.
16 tees off behind the baseball field, down by the creek to an uphill, slight left shot that has some trees near the basket to guard, and a hill that will roll you away.
17 is a long, downhill to uphill shot that plays over the creek and all the way back up to the water tower. There are low hanging limbs to deal with, and those sparse trees i was talking about earlier.
18 plays from the water tower back to near the parking lot. Putter is a good shot here, and it's easy to go long OB into the creek, hit some tree down at the bottom or simply get a bad roll and end up OB. Fun shot, and a nice finish to a really fun, challenging round of DG!