Pros:
Ditto Farms is a solid, if unspectacular course. A mostly-wooded layout is bookended by open holes creating two distinct feels to the course.
- Course offers a wide variety of everything: from hole layouts to course layouts. Players can choose one of four course layouts to play with duel teepads and baskets. I quickly learned that the course is best played playing short-to-short or long-to-long. The other two layouts give players some awkward hole layouts, as it feels the course designers were trying to fit square pegs into round holes with the additional options.
- There are some fun layouts here. The designers, to their credit, made most of the wooded-fairways wide enough that players can still be aggressive of most holes. That said, on some of the tougher holes, they force you to hit your line, or you'll be hitting trees and/or ending up deep in the rough.
- The wooded holes do offer some solid risk/reward layouts. Holes such as #8 & 13, which are both slight downhill, slight dogleg layouts give players a chance to be rewarded for aggressive, smart shot making. If you're like me, and end up smacking a tree on #13, you're suddenly scrambling to salvage bogey on a birdie-able hole.
- Course has very descriptive, very useful tee signs. Both tee pads have tee signs with the corresponding distances listed depending on which basket you're playing to. Tee signs also indicate where the next tee is located, which is a bonus.
- Hole #2 is the best of the open holes. It's a slight downhill shot to a basket in the woods, either straight ahead (short basket) or a slightly more awkward, around-the-bend (long basket).
- This is a nice park with lots of amenities. The course, and entire park, is very well maintained. Other than holes #1 & 18, the course is completely isolated from the rest of the park. You do get the awkward experience of playing right up to people's backyards on hole #4.
Cons:
Not a lot to complain about. This is a simple layout that's well-executed, creating a fun play. Only a couple of minor things to point out:
- The course is compacted into a relatively small portion of the course, which creates holes to play very close together. On the wooded portion of the course - #5 - 17 - there are multiple opportunities for players to jump to the wrong hole simply because they're so close together.
- This also means, on busy days, you'll have to be extremely careful to watch for discs sailing from other holes towards you, or being wary of your shots encroaching on other holes & players.
- After trying to play to play the Orange layout - short tee to long basket - I realized these off-shoot layouts weren't a great idea. With short-to-short and long-to-long, you have tees, fairways, and baskets created specifically for that layout. With these alternative layouts, there were enough times where I had to deal with a fairway that wasn't created for the shot that's needed and/or some funky angles to throw from. If I didn't care so much about playing the same layout throughout, I would have just changed to playing the long layout the entire round. I guess after 16 hours of driving and dis golf, I was just getting too lazy.
- I don't recall seeing many trash cans or benches throughout the course. That said, the course was clean, especially for one that seems to get so much traffic.
Other Thoughts:
This course impressed me. I had a fun round. I didn't have to worry about throwing big shots or having any blow-up scores. Even at the end of a long day, when my arm was shot, I salvaged every hole with nothing worse than a bogey.
- You can tell on #4 that parts of the park are on an old golf course, as an old sand trap is still evident.
- I think the worse thing to say about this course is that none of the holes stood out as memorable. Sure, you've got your quasi 'shoot the gap' holes on #8 & 9; Your dogleg left ace run on #13; your split fairway, uphill basket on the rocks on #14. They're all fun. But they're role players, not the star of the team.
- The course is good for a quick round, especially if you're looking to focus on your mid-range game. The Orange layout plays more than 5500 feet, averaging 310 feet per hole. Even at that length, I felt I was playing most efficiently when I was throwing 225 - 250 off the tee, avoiding any trouble, and getting up and down for simple 3s.
- I'm giving this course a 3.5 rating based upon the layout I played. I reckon some people view it as a higher quality, more challenging course from the Pro tees; whereas, some view it as a lesser course from the short, 4000-foot layout.