Pros:
Excellent mix of terrain, length, hole shape and features
Seven Par 4's and one par 5
Good tees
Short tees
Good signage
Scenic, beautiful setting
Active club
Well maintained
Cons:
Very tight in some sections with potential safety issues around tees
Private land requires opening, crossing, and closing gates and fences
Holes 11 -14 need a re-design to deal with safety of crossing fairways and blind walkouts in front of tees
Other Thoughts:
The Bud Pell at Ross Farm is an excellent, challenging course that is a lot of fun. Set in the fields and forests of Ross Farm, the course takes you from wide open pastures to tight line fairways, from downhill bombs to uphill squeakers, and from ace run par 3's to par 4's and 5's requiring precision shot making to score well. This is what disc golf design should be moving towards in the future! With short tees available (I only played the longs) this course can be fun for everyone. The long tees are very challenging, and experienced golfers will find a new challenge at every tee box. This is classic Pacific Northwest golf: big trees, forested fairways, a scenic setting, and adds in the diversity of playing in part on farmland with pastures and ponds adding to the mix. It's a great course and another feather in the cap of the West Sound Disc Golf Association.
The best things about this course and design are the varied hole lengths, shapes and terrain. You quickly move from open to forested to mixed and the lengths and shapes of the holes keep changing as you move through. Holes 2-4 challenge you from the very beginning with the par 4 Hole 2 requiring a long blind downhill dogleg right that must carry a fence but not stray too far straight ahead or you are in the long wet grass, and that's just to get you in position for your approach. Hole 3 is a monstrous 1022 foot par 5 with a tree line about 600 feet down the fairway you must negotiate to get set up for your approach. Then it is into the woods and the first hole is a tricky uphill par 4 with fair but tight lines and an OB fence all the way down the left side just waiting for your disc to get kicked. By the time I got to Hole 5 I wasn't sure if I was in love or just had Stockholm Syndrome! It is rare to find a disc golf course with the challenge and varied terrain of the Bud Pell, and designed to clearly push the sport forward into the future.
With that being said, there are a few things about the space available for the course and the design in a few spots that prevent this from being the 4 or 4.5 rated course I think it could be. In the case of the area around holes 4-6 where the available space is very compressed I don't think there is a solution. There was at least one safety net protecting players but I imagine on a crowded day it might be a problem. This is also one of the areas where you encounter the (sometimes electric) fencing on the course which allows disc golf to co-exist with a working farm. It is basically well signed and well explained what not to do, and how to unhook and re-hook the fence when crossing it, but since disc golfers are involved I imagine it is sometimes not given the attention it needs by players. Considering the needs of the land owners I think it is extraordinary that it seems to be working well so far, and an all too rare example of generosity and cooperation that make it work on both sides.
As much as I loved this course I do have a serious criticism about a small part of the design, and I think it must have a solution. I may be missing something, or just unaware of some constraints on this part of the course, but the section from holes 10-14 has a bewildering amount of fairways crossing and walkouts bringing players directly into the path of tee boxes and in front of baskets. I may have just not known the right path to take but it seemed like there must be some way to clean up that corner, whether re-numbering holes or something else.
I think both these areas are a product of space limitation more than anything, and as such any solutions will be somewhat limited. Considering the compressed nature of some of the space available and the fact that this course is open and free to the public but located on private property, the Bud Pell is an amazing accomplishment in today's world of disc golf and course design. With the short tees making the course attractive to beginners and the long tees challenging the most experienced disc golfers, this course is a serious winner. There are always more amenities to add in teepad improvements, benches, etc and I am sure the WSDGA will continue to pimp out the Pell. With some more maturing, primping, and addressing the design problems in the back corner, this course would easily get a 4 or 4.5 rating. The Bud Pell is a must play!