Pros:
+ You need every throw that exists
+ Perfectly maintained all year long
+ Perfect baskets and tee pads
+ Perfect signage, especially with the addition of untamperable pin placement markers
+ Every shot all day is risk/reward: drives, approaches, and especially putts.
+ Pro shop on site
+ Constantly shifting pin placements mean a fresh look
+ Portable bathroom on site
Cons:
- Crowds
- Crowds of families throwing lids 20ft at a time who would have had a better time at Aptos
- Crowds of tourists that don't know course rules, some of which are there for safety
- If you are a beginner, expect to waste a good deal of time pulling discs out of ravines, or bring cash to buy extra discs in the parking lot
- Central coast poison oak (PO)
- Brutal, occasionally sneaky, difficulty
- Only a couple spots for the wide open big bombs...you'll never get to relax and just throw
-$2 to park, which makes it the only pay-to-play for many miles (though I wish it were more expensive to cut down on #1, #2, and #3)
- Um...no water fountain on site, I guess. I'm really reaching.
Other Thoughts:
Notes:
I have put off writing this review for a while now. DeLa is DeLa, ya' know? It's not like it needs me shilling for it. Considering all factors, it's clearly the best course in this part of the country.
The important points are listed above, so I'm just going to talk about the course a little bit. I don't need to talk you into trying out DeLa. If you're a disc golfer and you're visiting the area, it's a no-brainer. If you're a disc golfer and you're living in the area, you've played DeLa. If you're not a disc golfer, you're not reading this.
Delaveaga has always been my home course. I started out playing there in the late 90's with nothing but a Shark. A few hours at DeLa meant at least three beers and three hours, often without seeing another set of golfers. It was just a part of living in SC, like jogging along West Cliff, or not remembering how you got home from the Red Room.
I didn't begin playing DG with a purpose until summer 2011. As my distance crept up, so did the amount of time I spent searching for discs in ravines. In my opinion, this course is toughest on low intermediate players with the arm to put the disc far into trouble. Thinking back, during that phase of my development, I actually avoided the course for quite a while without really realizing it. I was spending more than a half-hour per round clambering, and a few times repelling, through PO.
Every hole at DeLa is a par 3. This doesn't mean that 3 is the average number of strokes it takes people to put the disc in the basket...just that the par is always 3. A pattern I've noticed with many courses is that designers try to make sure that one of those three shots is tough; at DeLa, unless you truly park one of your first two, every shot is likely to be difficult, making it one of the great risk/reward courses. On most of the holes, the only way to park the shot is to mix a little bravery in with your skill. Most of the fairways are full of obstacles. Most of the greens are guarded and are fast/sloped/littered with roots, making even simple upshots nerve-racking. I promised myself that I wouldn't write this review until I started to put together regular par or better rounds--it only took 14 years.
Celebrate your pars, take your birdies where you can get them, and when you do get a bogey, smile and remember that you're in Santa Cruz, playing disc golf at one of the greatest courses in the world.