Just off the banks of the Ohio River, the small town of Rockport offers up The Bluff, a decent nine-hole course with some elevation and hole variety that is marred a bit by tiny teepads and a couple design flaws.

The Bluff does a good job of mixing in several short holes with a few longer holes – including one par 4 – and still keeping the design semi-friendly for beginners.

The elevation adds some challenge and can punish errant shots. The baskets for Holes #3 and #5 are positioned in a precarious place on the side of a hill that runs down to a small stream, and rollaway potential is high.

All the fairways are grassy and the Hole #4 basket drops down into a lovely little landing area.

Navigation is fairly straight forward as the course progresses in a counter-clockwise loop around the perimeter of the park.

The baskets appear to be Mach X with a red top assembly, blue cage and the hole number on top, making them easy to spot.

My biggest gripe about the course design is Hole #1. The 280-foot hole is slightly downhill and the triangular-shaped landing zone is marked as "an island" on the tee sign, which is a bit gimmicky. However, the sin is that there's a telephone pole on the right side about halfway to the basket that is marked as a mando. This forces a backhand turnover or RHFH and takes away the open hyzer line to the basket. Granted, that line would go out over the little park road, but there's complete visibility and wouldn't likely present any danger.

Three of the holes include a gradual uphill climb (Holes #4, 7 and 9) that hides the basket from the teepad. In addition, Hole #4 involves navigating an OB road on the left, a pasture fence on the right and a line of trees near the middle of the fairway. And the teepad for Hole #9 and its fairway are right next to a chain-link fence that will be a nuisance for misbehaving discs.

The teepads are really short. Maybe six feet long. Maybe.

Our group encountered a gentleman who asked us if we had lost any discs recently. We responded that we hadn't and it was our first time playing the course. He asked where we were from and we responded with "Ohio" and "Tennessee," and he seemed shocked. "Wow," he said, "You've come a long way to disc golf here!" We explained that we were on a disc golf weekend trip and were playing numerous courses in the area. He smiled and responded, "Well, welcome to Rockport!"