Pros:
- navigation is decent (tee signs help mark tee locations and let you know where next tee is)
- easy access with plentiful parking
- rare interaction with other park users; not too busy with disc golfers either
Cons:
- lack of line shaping overall
- baskets pretty rusty
- the walk after hole nine!
- tees are terrible to nonexistent (sometimes ruts in dirt, other times nothing), and this is especially problematic due to the sloped terrain near many tee signs
Other Thoughts:
I would have had more fun here except that I played on the way to Knob Hill, and I was already tired after playing several of Pittsburgh's better courses earlier in the day. The golf here was pretty ordinary, though there were some fun shots. Maybe my favorite was a downhill on hole 3, throwing around a mature tree. It's a very simple shot, but was fun and is a shot I am yet to master. Hole 4 was the only real line-shaper, but not particularly memorable or fun. From 5 to the end, at least three were RHBH hyzer shots with trees along the left side. There was really just one shot where I needed left to right action. The golf wasn't terrible but felt a bit repetitive.
This course reminded me that one of my pet peeves are sloping fairways. Hole 2's slopes pretty steeply from right to left the whole way, and it just makes walking the fairway miserable, even with decent hiking shoes. Maybe this would be better with a path cut into the slope?
Somewhere I saw that this was an Eagle scout project. Interestingly, I've only played one other course with such a long walk back to the course start, and it was another Eagle scout project in Lindsay, OK. Maybe Eagle scouts just don't consider walking an issue? The two farthest points on the entire course (hole 9's basket and hole 2's basket) are a little under 2300' as the crow flies (thank you Google maps). The first tee is about 2100' from 9's basket, so yes, almost as far apart as the course designer could have made it. This seems even farther when including the elevation and the lack of a direct line back. Although the course flow is fine, this long walk from the course's end to the parking area is inconvenient, somewhat exhausting, and downright frustrating and mind-boggling for a first timer. Although the designer did an adequate job using what appears to have been a narrow strip of land available for holes 5 through 9, it just seems like some adjustments should have been made to avoid this...
After 9, I was tempted to walk the course in reverse to ensure I didn't get lost. However, the gravel then paved trail right after hole 9 helped make the 10-15 minute return journey slightly less painful. DEFINITELY TAKE THIS PATH! Another option would have been to create my own holes while playing the course backwards.
Rating: I'll give it a 2.0 for reasonable. The golf wasn't bad for a 2.0, but that walk from 9 to 1 was so long that I'm knocking the rating a little bit. It's a beautiful setting and does have some fun (but almost all open) holes. With so many good courses in the area, I probably won't be making it back.