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East Springfield, PA

Al's Garage

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25(based on 1 reviews)
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rhelt100
Experience: 14.8 years 64 played 12 reviews
2.00 star(s)

A round with Al 2+ years drive by

Reviewed: Played on:Jul 29, 2017 Played the course:once

Pros:

-Interesting Location - This course meanders its way through the remains of an old concrete works. There are a lot of concrete structures throughout the course (pits, walls, retaining walls) that add some elevation and interesting looks to several of the pin positions.

-Basket Positions - Basket placement for roughly half of the baskets is what I would label "unique" or "special".
Basket 1 is mounted on a long strip of concrete with pits on both sides. Basket 2 has a deep concrete pit immediately behind to punish long shots. Basket 4 is kind of halfway up a two tier retaining wall. Basket 5 is in an area with two rather large circular concrete retaining walls. Basket 9 is right in front of a cool abandoned trailer with an open window that could make an errant shot quite a challenge to hole out.

-Homemade Baskets - I know what you're thinking, homemade baskets is a plus? Yes, in this case I think it is. The owner wasn't kidding when he stated the baskets are "homemade but totally regulation dimensions." I've seen homemade baskets on a handful of courses...some were usable, some were downright not playable. These baskets function exactly like regulation baskets and they look really cool. Thumbs up to Al for his "yankee ingenuity" as one of my friends described it while we were playing the course.

-Owner - Yep, hat tipping the owner, Al, here as well. I gave him a heads up on what time we would be there and he was happy to meet up and play a round with us. Friendly guy and we got some info on how this place used to operate back in the day. We ended up inviting him to play the course we had planned for after this one and he drove the 30 minutes to play another round with us.

Cons:

-This is a young course and it suffers from many of the same issues that you'd expect to see on any new course.
Roughly half of the course is in the woods and the fairways aren't well defined yet. Really tight lines on a few holes and one par 3 that didn't really have a defined line to the basket.
Teepads are natural but I really didn't notice any footing issues during my round.

-Multiple groups playing the course at the same time will likely bump into eachother. There are six baskets on the course for the nine holes, so there are three holes that share baskets.Two of those holes have partially shared fairways as well.

-Terrain - Admittedly, I don't really consider the terrain as a con but some do so I'll put it here. You will have to climb up a few steep sections, possibly climb into or out of 3-4 foot deep concrete lined pits, and walk a short balance beam at one point to retrieve discs from one of the baskets. Having said this, one of the people in my group has had several leg surgeries and can sometimes have trouble getting around on tough surfaces like this. He didn't seem to have any trouble.

Other Thoughts:

I'm always reluctant to review courses where I have met the owner because I don't want to offend anyone. However, I think when writing a review, it's important to be honest or not write the review. I really didn't want to give this course a 2.0 because frankly, I enjoyed playing it and really liked the cool location. However, the shared fairways is really what set the rating for me. I think more than one group playing at a time could be a safety issue.
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