Pros:
Scenic course winds through a nicely wooded section of a fairly large, well maintained county park that offers several other activities.
• Challenge: Particularly well suited to the intermediate/advanced player, but pros and beginners will enjoy themselves here as well. Only a couple of holes struck me as something beginners should find truly intimidating from the short tees. High marks for a design that can pretty much accommodate all skill levels.
• Shot variety/Course Design: Excellent. Features many moderately to well wooded holes, but still has a few fairways that are open enough to air it out, with a few holes that start out open that have you putting to a well-guarded basket in the woods. Fairways can be difficult, but are reasonable to hit, and if you start bouncing wide off trees, strokes can pile up quickly. Nice balance in terms of fairways that favor hyzer/annie/straight /S-shots from the tee. Some offer several lines, others pretty much restrict you to one or two. Each set of tee pads offers a nice selection of distances (check out the distances on the scorecard).
• Elevation: plenty of it and well used - has you throwing downhill, uphill, and over gullies, with a few holes playing relatively flat. Some pins on or near slopes, so you gotta hit putts and upshots right or you could lose some strokes.
• Multiple Tees: Red, White, and Blue, concrete pads offer increasing challenge. More often than not, they provide slightly different looks at the fairway, and occasionally different elevations... pretty much guarantees an assortment of distances you'll be happy with if you're willing to switch up which pads you tee off from during a round.
• Multiple Pin locations: I don't recall what position the pins were in during my round, but the fact that they vary pin placements from time to time helps keep it from getting boring and adds variety - always a plus in my book.
• Natural Beauty: Deer Lakes is certainly a well-maintained, and pleasant place to play a round. Mature trees, rolling terrain, water, well defined fairways, and mowed grass on open holes, all make for a wonderful setting and a really enjoyable round. I can only imagine how beautiful this place must be in the fall. Not as rough around the edges and rugged as Moraine.
• Equipment: Excellent. Large concrete pads, baskets in great shape. Each pad has color tee markers with hole layout, tee locations and, distance (pretty sure they also showed possible pin locations) . Long fairways equipped with markers to let you know the distance remaining to the basket. Next tee signs to help move you in the right direction.
• Memorable/Unique holes: several 2, 3, 9, 15
• Surprisingly little rough for a course of this caliber.
• Navigation/flow: My guide was quite familiar so I can't elaborate, but most paths were obvious and course seemed to flow pretty well. The only section I recall being confusing was where the course opens up around holes 7-9.
• Amenities/Other: Fresh water available every few holes. Large park offers plenty of other activities - fishing, playgrounds, restrooms. Course was spotless - amazing when you consider how long and spread out this course is and the amount of traffic it must get.
Cons:
Take these with a grain of salt:
• I like the idea of three sets of pads, but on a few holes, they were essentially longer/shorter versions of the same shot. Ideally, at least one of the pads should provide a significantly different view of the fairway that makes you choose a different line or type of shot/release.
• Water in the lake seems stagnant. Sure, it looks nice from a distance, but up close, it seems a bit on the nasty side.
• Hole 8: I wouldn't necessarily call it a bad hole, but in comparison to the rest of the course, it seemed a bit "meh."
Other Thoughts:
This is a long course with lots of up/downhill trekking , plan accordingly; give yourself time to play, bring a water bottle( maybe even a snack), and wear comfortable shoes.
Hole 15 can be soft/muddy around the lake, but it's a water hole, if water level drops, the exposed ground is bound to be mushy - I won't list that as a con.
Standout holes include:
(#3) An arduous 600'+ uphill gauntlet that's fairly tight the entire way, but not ridiculously so. Nose one up and fade hard and you could end up in jail :-( Keep things on the straight and narrow and you win.
(#9) The longest hole on the course is a sweeping bomb that plays right to left from a moderately elevated and unobstructed tee to an open field sprinkled with a smattering of trees below. At the edge of the field, the woods guard a basket (perhaps 100 ft away?) placed on a moderate slope. Approach shots that slide past the basket can rollaway for a two-putt.
(#15) Red, white and blue tees line up like steps with a canopy of trees overhead framing the water you have to throw over. The higher up you choose to tee off, the farther you must throw to carry the water, to a pin that lies close enough to the edge of the pond to provide plenty of thrill. Even if your disc hits solid ground, it could roll back into the water or slide past for a long putt... with the lake now looming ominously behind the basket. That being said - there's no denying this hole is really an Ace run!
Bottom Line: Deer Lakes really is a special course that's a helluva lot of fun to play, and locals have every reason to be proud of it. Every bit as good as Moraine, but in many ways entirely different, everyone will have their own opinions and preferences. Throw in Knob Hill and you really have genuine destination-worthy discing.