1) Initial impressions as you arrive are a beautiful college campus, small parking lot near the course but ample if you are willing to walk a bit, really nice pond with a large fountain and surrounded by a ring of rock to add to it's beauty. Lightly wooded with the trees that do exist being large and mature.

2) There are 3 sets of tees blue (pro), white (rec), and red (female) and 2 pin locations for each hole so there are a lot of options for multiple layouts to be used.

3) Fairways were mowed but still very thick, probably 4-5 inches high, and the outline of each hole was not mowed intentionally. The tall grass was used to outline the hole and played as OB (well on some holes anyways as indicated by the tee pad signs). The only reason this is a pro, is because it gives definition and aesthetic character. Otherwise this would feel like open park golf with a few trees.

4) The front 9 is very open and very much in the style of park golf with open holes easy distances, most in the 275 foot range. The shorter tees are even easier with several holes dropping below the 200 foot range. If you want to play one angle, score well, open style golf, just play the front 9.

5) Gateway's Dave McCormick designed with Gateway baskets. Had no issues with the baskets but see the cons for everything else.

6) Even from the blue-long tees I never felt any of the holes were unfair distance wise. In fact, the blue tees on average only added 50 feet per hole, they just made the gaps and angles to hit more difficult. Very scoreable course.

1) Despite a massive course board, the actual course map is only about the size of a computer monitor and the rest of the space is unused. With 3 tee pad locations for each hole and 2 pin locations there is a ton of information jammed in a very small space and it's hard to decipher.

2) There are no tee pads. You will be throwing off of grass, sometimes very high unmowed grass. All that exists is small colored wooden stakes to denote where the tee should be. We tried to play the long blue but there were several holes where the blue stakes were either missing or unable to be found, or the blue location was unmowed and knee high, so we threw from the stake we could find.

3) The unmowed sections along each hole are a nusaunce. You will spend more time looking for you discs than you do actually playing the course.

4) Wildlife... While I'm always one down for seeing a deer, fox, or groundhound, this course graces you with the unwanted kind. Bugs are prevalent here, mosquitoes are plentiful, we saw two snakes (one copperhead and one non-threatening king snake) and there was poison ivy everywhere. I was truly expecting a more well maintained course that was billed as a championship level course with future pro tour stop aspirations.

5) There are multiple "bad holes" on this course. Not holes I just dislike, but that are obvious filler and poorly executed. Just a few I wrote down: Hole 3 is a very short fish hook shaped hole par 4. The intended fairway is the path from hole 1 green to hole 2 tee. If you miss long you land on #1 green, if you cut inside, you land on #15 green, or throw through people putting. Hole #11, absolute filler hole, the first truly heavily wooded hole and plays down and old sparsely graveled access road. Par 4 with a tree directly in front of the tree, maybe 3 feet, and cuts off any angle that doesn't force you to throw into the heavy thick woods. Zero effort to maintain this hole, none of it, including the fairway or green are mowed. The basket had grass tall enough that it was up into the cage of the basket. Hole #12 is even worse, a 375 foot par 3 that is just a mowed strip down an otherwise unkempt woods and it is shaped like a subtle S. The fairway is literally only as wide as your car from tee to green. We spent 45 minutes on this hole looking for discs that were within 5 feet of the mowed fairway when found. Hole #15 is an exact copy of hole #3, another fish hook. And the green is surrounded by other tees and greens with only a couple trees to protect them. Hole #13 wasn't mowed at all and there was no difference between fairway and OB tall grass as indicated on the tee sign.

6) While Hole #18 felt like a signature hole playing around the pond, you never once felt like the design utilized the pond correctly. There are no water carries, an no places where the design took the pond or water features into play. The pond is blind off the tee on 18 and you only really see it when you approach the green, despite there being plenty of land to utilize throwing over the pond, it wasn't incorporated.

7) Entire course plays through low lying property below the college. Despite the lack of rain in quite a while in the area most of the course was still swampy and probably contributes to the lack of mowing.

8) Navigation is a nightmare, there is no indication where the next basket or tee is, no indication which pin position the basket is in, and most baskets are blind from the tee so you have to walk fairways to try and gain your bearings.

9) There are no amenities throughout the course save a lone port-o-john near hole #11.

10) You are so likely to lose a disc on this course that this fact alone almost makes this course unplayable. We found so many discs, while searching for one of our own, that we just started hanging them on trees next to the baskets. Cell reception was terrible here and after a while we got tired of taking the time to message everyone.

Some people will love this kind of course, but I was not one of them. I drove a long way to see this new "championship level" gem and it was disappointing from the start. It feels rushed and unfinished (though it's been installed since 2020). My entire group was trying to be optimistic and point out both things we liked and disliked about each hole as we proceeded and it became apparent very early on that the negatives heavily outweighed the positives. Save yourself the trip until this course is truly finished (if it ever will be). It is simply outclassed in every way by Fox Prairie just up the road in McCleansboro and even the small park golf course in Eldorado only 10 minutes away (Karel Park). The saving grace for this course is that there is some room to grow. Some of the holes can be lengthened still or replaced entirely. This is also a course I would recommend playing in the winter months if you are going to play at all. I expected Idelwild, Mahr Park, or even a small version of Eagle's Crossing since Dave designed it, but it didn't execute that level at all. It was our first stop on our memorial day weekend bagging trip and we were very concerned the courses might have only gotten worse from there. I give this a 2.5 because it is in my opinion unfinished and has some potential, but it needs to come a long way.