Pros:
An excellent new addition to the Greenville area and eastern NC!
+ The course is almost entirely wide-open, but strategically placed trees, rough, and tall grass still encourage careful shot-shaping. While open courses are often smooth and easy to play, and fun to throw long bombs on, I often dislike them due to the lack of risk/reward thinking and technical skill required. But this course is one of the rare exceptions, that finds a beautiful balance between ease of play, technical demand, and pure fun.
+ Two sets of tees on every hole, that differ dramatically and complement each other very well.
+ The short tees are fun and approachable for all skill levels. Beginners to the game won't have too many punishing obstacles in their way, and largely get to throw straight at the baskets, testing their distance. Meanwhile, intermediate and advanced players should have enough distance, but will have to carefully shape their shots through early gaps and low ceilings off the tee to rack up birdies. Every hole here can probably be birdied from the short tees by a serious player, but it would take fantastic execution on a wide variety of distances and lines.
+ The long tees are a dramatic challenge, and provide a great contrast. Not only are they upwards of 100 ft. longer than the short tees, but the many windows and gaps that you have to hit are also 100 ft. further away, requiring both distance and excellent command/technique to execute on. There are very few easy birdies from the long tees, in many cases you will have to fight just for a well-earned par.
+ Outstanding mix of shots required. No matter which tees you play, you will probably need touchy putter shots and max distance crushes and everything in-between, all on a wide variety of left/right/straight/flex lines.
+ Brand new Discatcher baskets, that ring loud and clear on putts that strike the heart of the chains.
+ Turf teepads provide good traction, and are mostly adequately sized.
+ Excellent, clear tee signs, along with a large course map at the start.
+ Navigational arrows are welded onto the spokes of the baskets, pointing you to the next tee (but see below).
+ All in all, a total joy to play.
Cons:
- The course is very prone to flooding, to an extreme degree. I visited the course after a week-long spell of frequently rainy weather, but no hurricanes or anything else extraordinary. Nonetheless, hole 1, holes 11-13, and several of the long tees were all underwater and completely unplayable. Many fairways and hole transitions were also fairly wet and required jumps and hops between islands of dry land. How can over 20% of a course be completely unplayable after a fairly normal rain event? If this course gets hit by a hurricane, which realistically is inevitable every few years, I wonder how many baskets and teepads would survive, and how many months it would take for the course to re-open. I wonder if the more troublesome holes may even need to be relocated entirely. A real shame, because all of those flooded holes looked like they might be incredibly fun, potentially among the best on the course. But if they're regularly underwater and unplayable, they might as well not exist.
- I wish the long and short tees were color-coded/marked in some way, to aid navigation. The navigational arrows on the basket spokes appear to point towards the long tees, and I noticed some casual family groups who mistakenly played those demanding long tees as a result, not realizing which tee they were on. There were a few cases where the two tees were in line in an open field, and I couldn't tell which direction they threw towards at first, and therefore which was short or long. The tee signs surprisingly don't help, as they only show the perspective of the tee you are standing on. Colored stakes, or paint on the teebox, could be an easy improvement.
- Both times that I played Hole 4, I absent-mindedly threw to Hole 5's basket, because it's right there in front of you, with a really fun shot shape. But in reality, hole 4's basket is completely blind from the tee, in the woods on the right, and the thick vines short of the corner seem ripe for eating up lost discs. I kind of wish this layout was a little different here.
- From the long tees, having to hit so many late gaps/windows becomes a bit repetitive of a play experience. These are easy score separators, but it feels like your entire round is basically dependent on how many of those late gaps you can successfully hit, and very little else ends up being consequential to your score. This does not apply to the short tees at least.
- No restrooms available at the moment, and possibly no water either (I didn't check the exercise loop near the end).
Other Thoughts:
From a pure 'fun factor' perspective, this has immediately become one of my favorite courses in eastern NC. And it's amazing to me how well it plays across all skill levels, from first-timers all the way to competitive advanced players, there is something for everyone to enjoy. But the frequent flooding is a very serious issue, and I even worry about the long-term future of this course as a result. Make sure to visit while you can, preferably during a long dry spell! I'd love to hear about what those flooded holes are really like.