Pros:
The course is laid out very well. Nicely manicured areas and great landscaping around each hole and down the fairways.
The course is pretty 'open' with only a few holes within trees.
Great signage and pointers to all the tee boxes and pins.
Super friendly staff that drive around and ask for input and how the course is playing for you that day.
Cons:
Price - Sure, the course isn't that expensive and the cost goes towards the upkeep of the course itself. Lots of areas to mow, maintain, and such. However, $4 dollars to play for each person + the cost to actually get into the park (which is $3 for Ingham County residents and a bit more for non-residents). $7.00 to play could turn off a few players. But it is still worth it.
Some of the holes are super long, which could be a turn off to a few players. The longest hole (in the long tee to long basket setup) is 1019 feet. Wow.
The tee-pads are different than what I'm used to playing. Only about 2.5-3 feet wide, but 10 feet long. I'm used to maybe 4-5 feet wide and about 7-8 feet long. Not particularly bad, but threw me off at first.
The banner which gives details about the course before the first tee pad is littered with grammatical errors which, of course, doesn't hamper the course at all, but it does look bad as it is missing words, adds too many in (like "into to"), and has numerous misspelled words. Just doesn't look good at all. *I say this knowing that my review here could contain some grammatical mistakes, but I'm going to go out on a limb and state that mine aren't nearly as obvious or 'bad' as the banner at Burchfield.
Other Thoughts:
I just moved up to Mason, MI from Columbia, SC and decided to check this course out this past Saturday (9/3/2011). I can honestly say that this is the best course I've ever played.
I haven't played on that many courses, but compared to those courses (most being in SC, but also in NC and one other in MI) this is a great course. Four different ways to play with some pretty iconic holes. That 10 foot wall on hole 2 is pretty daunting and the 18th basket up on the water-feature is just picturesque.
Very well maintained, awesome staff that plays and cares about the course/game as well, and from what I'm used to awesome weather. All this and more combine to make a wonderful course just outside of Lansing, MI