Wolf Knob DGC is the first of what will eventually be two John Houck designed courses on site. This one is the more beginner friendly of the two. If you want to consider it that. The course consists of mostly hilly wooded holes with a few other more open, but still hilly, holes. The course is pay to play ($6/person) which can be paid at the pro shop by the parking lot. No reservations are required and it's open to the public.

The terrain here is outstanding for disc golf. The location is out in the middle of nowhere Kentucky so your round will be very peaceful. No sounds of traffic or any other people even, besides those others out on the course that day.

The baskets are brand new Mach X's. I don't see these as much as I'd like to. These are really nice targets. They catch great and all are mounted nicely here. There's one basket and pin location per hole.

Great tee signs. Nice looking hole map that gives you good idea of where and what shape you're going to need to throw. There's also a next tee arrow to go along with the hole #, par and distance. Very nice signage.

The tees are turf out here. These things are huge on a few holes. Most are normal to slightly below sized. I thought they worked great, though I know not everyone is a fan of these. They're all leveled out nicely below them and have good traction to them. I liked them. One tee per hole.

The elevation out here is used expertly. Not just in the design of each hole, but also in the way that the course is laid out. You don't feel like it's really that hilly with the way the transitions between holes is laid out. A lot of courses like this feel like a slog after about halfway through, if not sooner. Not this one though.

The wooded holes are tight for sure, but they all offer a fair route to the basket. There's a good mix of both lefty and righty holes too. Just a well balanced affair all around out here. Lots of risk/reward pin placement out here as well.

There's water in play on hole 18 in the form of a small pond just about circles edge short of the pin. Technically you could reach the other pond if you go way long on 16 or turn your drive (or for mortals second shot) over on 18.

The course loops somewhat back near the parking lot after hole 9. Not real close but you're able to walk the entrance road back if you'd need to fill up on liquids or whatnot.

Only one tee and basket position per hole. Very nitpicky, I know, but it'd be cool if there were eventually some shorter pads added. At least on a few of the holes to make it a little easier on newer players.

Hole 15 is pretty sadistic. Only the best of the best are going to sniff birdie here. Getting par is taking shots from most everybody else. The ceiling is pretty low off the tee to a very specific landing zone to attack the green. It's doable but it's going be mostly luck unless you've played multiple rounds here.

There's a couple weird transitions out here where you walk past a hole to get to the next one. The group in front of us missed the transition from 8 to 9 and ended up playing 12 before realizing it. Our group nearly made the same mistake. You also walk past 18's tee when heading to 16. There's also a few longer walks between holes but they ARE marked well enough.

This course was a pleasure to play. Very good design and just a damn fun round. I'll be back here at some point to play the 11,000 championship course that's in the works and when I do I'll absolutely be playing this one again. Well worth a trip out of your way to play this one. Once the other course opens this will be a destination course. Loved it.

If you like dense woods combined with varied elevation changes on nearly every hole, than you'll enjoy Wolf Knob. This is a John Houck course and it features some of the things we've come to expect from Houck (multi throw holes, holes with multiple routes, nice signs and other course equipment). Those tendencies are balanced by a bunch of tight par 3s in the woods that feature elevation change and really get your blood pumping on the tee. You know you can park them, but you need to hit a specific line just right to reach the circle.

Hole 12 is really striking, with a tight window to hit right off the tee followed by an abrupt and significant drop in elevation to a slightly wider fairway that continues downhill at a more gentle grade through the woods to the basket. The path from the tee takes a winding route over by 8s green and eventually down to the main fairway. Look back towards the tee once you're in the main fairway and you'll see that indirect walk is because you just threw from the top of a rocky bluff in the middle of dense woods. It's a spectacular looking hole from the tee, but you don't get the full sense of it until you get down to the fairway.

Lots of memorable shots in the woods with just a few open holes at the beginning and end doesn't exactly equal balance, but since the scales tipped heavily toward my favorite type of dg holes (see the first sentence of this review) I wasn't complaining a bit. Wolf Knob seems aimed at white level players, but I would think both lesser and more skilled players would still have fun here. Two par 4s on both the front and back 9 yields a par of 58, which is around the sweet-spot in my mind for an enjoyable round of casual dg. Primarily made up of reachable par 3s for the intended skill level, with just a few par 4s to add some variety in the form of the location of the lie for your second shot, Wolf Knob allows you to hop on the birdie train, but you better hit your lines or you're getting derailed hard. The rough doesn't feature disc eating undergrowth, but the tree trunks are dense enough that it's really tough for a bad shot to advance far.

Equipment was all very nice. Level turf tees seemed well installed. Mach X baskets, a course map near hole 1, benches at some tees, and detailed Houck signs round out the full package. Due to the densely wooded nature of the course, navigation was easy. There was generally one path off each green that led to the next tee. You couldn't go wrong without bushwhacking. The only two places where you could get confused would be the crisscrossing 8 to 9 and 11 to 12 transitions and the closely located, parallel tees for 16 and 18 in one of the most open parts of the course. We had no issues with the former and shouldn't have with the latter, but at the end of a sweaty, humid round we got confused for a minute. We walked up to 16s tee for the second time before we remembered we needed to bypass it and walk along the ridge back to 18. We noticed long before anyone was getting ready to throw and it only added a negligible amount of walking.

Some holes too often will yield random results. On hole one, I sawed off my attempted rhbh hyzer skip shot, hit one of the many small trees that form a wall at the entrance to the green, deflected further left, and still was in the circle for birdie. Bad shot + bad kick = birdie? This hole is less than 200', so I guess the tree wall is there to add some challenge, but it's introducing a ton of randomness. There are a few other holes with slightly fluky elements, but hole one is definitely the worst offender.

The map doesn't do a good job of reflecting how densely wooded this course is. The course appears to be made up of grassy fairways bordered by dense woods, but all but maybe 2.5 holes have full tree canopy overhead, tight lines and hard-packed dirt. 16, 18 and the first half of 1 are the open, park-style holes, but you could never tell that from the map. There is absolutely a pond behind 16s basket, but the pond before 18s has yet to be filled. Just a scruffy bunker for now.

Tees are little on the small side. Not tiny by any means, but I wouldn't have minded an extra foot of length and maybe width on a few drives. Just one tee per hole, other than the par 4 hole 7, which has a short pad. On most of the par 3s, I wouldn't have wanted to throw another line than the one presented, but this course is missing that key Houck feature of being playable (at a similar level of difficulty) for a range of skill levels. Only one basket position per hole as well.

I had a nice chat with the owner before we started. Currently they have Wolf Knob and a par 2 beginner course open and complete onsite. Eventually they will also have a 11k foot gold course open as well. It sounded like they started work on all three at the same time and eventually had to shift the focus to completing the shorter two courses first. I can only imagine how much work it will take to carve an 11k foot course out of this terrain. He didn't throw out a date for when the gold course would open, but I got the impression that it wouldn't be in 2023. Maybe 2024? I got the impression that although Wolf Knob is a finished product, there would be some improvements happening as they have time. The property is called the Hickory Cabins, and they have a few very nice ones available to rent.

Be advised, even though it's located near the border of a national park, this course is in a very rural area with little to nothing in the way of services nearby. Plan/pack ahead. If you're coming through on I-65, Hart county (Munfordville) is dry, but 15 minutes south on the interstate you can find craft beer if you're so inclined.

I'm going with a rating of 4, but I nearly went 4.5. This was a really fun course that hits pretty much all of my sweet spots. It didn't quite break into the 4.5 tier though. Still an excellent course.

We've passed through the Mammoth Cave area twice now, stopping each time for a night's rest and a round of disc. Planning to come back and actually spend a few days exploring the park. Definitely looking forward to playing Wolf Knob again on that trip.