Pros:
WHAT TO EXPECT: Angel Mounds is a Native American State Historical site on the banks of the Ohio River. The area is complete with a large parking area, museum, some traditional crop fields, burial mounds, and a nature trail. Disc golf seems forced and shoe horned onto a property you wouldn't expect a disc golf course to be.
AMENTIES: Several port o johns in the parking lot area, nice pavilion area, and as mentioned above, several non disc golf related historical sites and activities.
TEES/SIGNAGE/BASKETS (PROS): All 3 exists in various forms making the course playable...
DESIGN (PROS): There is a Red, Blue and Gold layout for various skill levels. The course is extremely flat and very cart friendly. Next tee pads are very close to the previous basket and long walks between holes barely exist. Mix of heavily wooded short technical holes and very open miss one tree bomber holes. Two elevated baskets #13 and #17.
ACE RUNS: There are multiple ace runs in the woods. Hole #2 especially as it sits only 180 feet away (from the golds) and I believe only 120 feet from the reds. Just hit a very small straight gap at the edge of circle 1 off the tee and listen for chains. There are multiple other wooded holes in that 220 foot range that require a VERY specific line, but can be aced.
Cons:
UPKEEP: Most noticeable right out of the gate is the mowing. Outside of the grass immediately adjacent to the museum parking lot (Holes #13 - #18) The grass is chest high, full of thorns and brambles with only a mower wide strip mowed down the center to create a path. The wooded holes #2-#12 only have a small dirt path worn down by walkers that creates a true fairway, the rest is extremely dense and unforgiving rough. We played a tournament here and spent a very long time looking for discs in the high grass, even with spotters, and several discs were lost during the round.
TEE PADS: There is a no dig policy on this course, therefore designers opted for natural teepads (bare dirt with two flat stones to mark the edges of the tee pad) These were impossible to see and we had to kick around in the dirt on several holes to find the stones marking the tees. Other areas have old turf style tees that are skinny and long and in degrading shape. None of them were level, most had holes and erosion parts where the turf was torn away. The other tees were spray painted boxes on the main museum road entrance, exit, and parking lot. We had to wait for traffic and throw over parked cars several times.
SIGNAGE: Most tee pad signs were a sheet of paper printed off with the hole distance, par, and hole number. They were very primitive, luckily most holes were so short that you could see the basket from the tee.
BASKETS: Half were prodigy portable baskets and half were red homemade baskets with 2 layers of chains but a basket that was less than a disc deep. Hard putts and anything high in the chains would not stick.
DESIGN: This used to be a 2 loop 9 hole course out in the open and someone decided to redesign and shoot it off into the woods. While I applaud this effort, the execution is somewhat lacking. There are a ton of forced ridiculous angle holes in the woods. While you can always remove trees later as a course breaks in, this course is just plinko on most tee shots or extreme angles that force you to chip around doglegs because of the mandos. There's a 280 foot par 4 that is shape like this ^. 100 feet to a heavily treed landing zone, then 180 feet heavily treed green. The holes are so close together, with so many tree kicks available, that you will often be in other holes fairways, or yelling fore. The open holes are some of the original design, and much longer 315 average for the par 3's and use massive old hardwood oak trees to force lines and use elevated baskets to break up the openness. While the variety is good, the drastic change in distances can be hard to handle for lower skill levels. Especially since the open holes all throw around or over parking lots and roads.
NAVIGATION: Will be a nightmare in the woods without a course map, U-Disc, or Native spiritual guidance. There are the occasional rocks with red arrows painted on them pointing towards the next tee, but they are hard to spot and often send you towards a different color tee than the layout you are playing.
Other Thoughts:
Interesting course to say the least. I wouldn't say that Angel Mounds is a "good" course, but it does well with what it has to offer and the limitations placed on it by being located on a Native Historical site. The Museum is only open 10-5 and the gate will be locked to access the property, but you can still play outside those hours if you park in the grass near the gate (from what I've been told). It will be a very long walk to Hole #1 from there so you can start on the hole closest to the gate which I believe is #15. While the current set up is way better than the previous, this course just doesn't stand out to me as a great experience due to the limitations. Hopefully as the course breaks in, the wooded section will become better defined, the tee pad issue can be addressed, and the homemade baskets can be traded out for better ones. Not a destination course unless you package the historical site along with it, or you are determined to hit all the courses near Evansville.