Pros:
- well maintained park with garbage cans and park benches near some holes
- high quality, detailed tee signs
- turf tees are ok, potentially slippery when wet
- some obstacles brought into play, especially on shortest holes
- high quality, high visibility baskets
- practice basket
- room to expand course slightly
Cons:
- distances are too short on most holes to be considered a respectable course
- very flat and mostly wide open
- hole 6 has no realistic line
- course ends with long walk back to parking lot
- only 7 holes
- sewage smell near part of course
Other Thoughts:
The Alsip DiscGolfPark is nestled behind an aquatic center along with some baseball fields and walking paths. This course is one of the simplest you play, but actually has some challenging obstacles so that it can benefit more than just beginners. With several sub-200 foot holes and 2 holes below 100 feet, you won't be getting much practice on your range, but the short holes do force you to hit a line in places.
This park is very clean and I honestly had fun playing it despite the simplicity. I'm a little confused as to why some of the holes were so short, as it seems like there is room to expand further along the wooded corridor between holes 4 and 5. It's possible the designers didn't want to further the risk of interfering with the walking path, but I could see this course expanding to 9 holes or lengthening some of the existing holes fairly easily.
I enjoyed the challenge of the wooded shots on holes 4-6, although hole 6 was a little frustrating. I'm all for challenging holes, but hole 6 didn't really have much of a line to it. Yes, this hole is under 100', so it's not going to put you out that bad. However, there were tree branches hanging right around the chains about 5' from it, so there's really no conceivable way to hit the chains with a high degree of confidence. A little trimming here could go a long way.
I didn't mind the turf tees, but I may have if it were wet. The baskets looked like DISCatchers but where an orangey-yellow I've never seen before. They are very visible and I liked it. All in all, the course is a quality course in a well-maintained park, it just doesn't have the distance or wow factor of others. It's definitely not a course you're going to drive out of your way for, but it does seem like it would be a great community course for introducing new people to disc golf. I'm glad to see more and more of these popping up so everyone gets to give our great sport a try.