Pros:
Feeney Park is a large multi-use park that apparently serves much of Calaveras County's recreational activities. It serves the youth and adult atheletes from Copperopolis to Bear Vally along Highway 4. It is the home field for Ebbets Pass Little League, Ebbetss Pass Youth Soccer League, and Sierra Ridge High Schools fields. Feeney Park also provides game and practice field for AMA football, AMA girls's softball, and local adult teams playing in the California State Soccer League. It also includes walking trails, picnic areas, Skate Park, and an amphitheater. It has batting cages, rest rooms, and a snack bar. I think at times the entire population of the town can be found here, more on that later.
18 Hole Disc Golf Course
Nice mix of holes, diverse shot selection, technical shots, elevation, and length.
Navigation was decent with tee signs featuring all the usual details: map, par, and distance.
18 Mach V Baskets.
Plenty of Parking with Restrooms.
Benches and Teepads.
Cons:
Rough Teepads: Uneven Rubber Pads with a toe kick
SAFETY: See Below
MULTI-USE PARK: See Below
Other Thoughts:
Quick Pros and quick cons which really don't tell you much, so let's get into the details. Let me start by saying I first played this course a couple of years ago now, and when I walked off of it that first day I wanted to take the course designer and the park supervisor that authorized this course and bang their heads together for ever thinking this was a good design, I was so disgusted with this course. I arrived that first time on a Saturday the parking lot was packed; I got a spot after a car pulled out between two other cars, got out was getting my bag together with a water bottle on the back of my truck and I was promptly nailed with a disc in the back of my leg. Not the best way to start off an introduction to a course. Now to be fair it is not the first time I've been hit with a disc in a parking lot, heck I got beamed once at Dela, one of the premier courses on the planet, but still doesn't help my mood to start a course. The guy who threw the disc came up to retrieve and was apologetic and I just took a deep breath and laughed it off. I find out the reason it happened is because they were shooting at hole 1s tone(now basket) and it is located apparently on an island in the parking lot that happened to be right in front of my truck, not exactly the best design, but moving on. I have no problem shooting at hole 1 but I could see where less advanced players would definitely struggle and make errors. I then move on to hole 2s pad which happens to be just right of the hole 1 island, while there I get to witness a group behind me throwing at hole 1 who let me play first, and sure enough one of them skips up and hits the undercarriage of my truck, no damage, but at this point I'm thinking are you kidding me but another deep breath and I move on. Hole 3 plays right along the edge of the main road on the narrow strip of land dividing the parking lot and road where any errant discs will go right at cars, again thinking not the best design. I get to hole 4 which of course has a warning signs telling me I'm playing into a school and not to play when school is in session. Don't Kill The Children, Check. Get to hole 5, hole 5 and hole 6s fairways criss-cross, did I mention there's a lot of people out here, enough said. Hole 7 plays along a field where a soccer game is being played, I don't really have a problem putting it onto the green but again I could see conflict with a lot of other players. Finally I come to hole 8 which is an elevated tee to a tone on the other side of the soccer game with a lot of parents spectating on the edges and the main highway framing the right. Its not very far and I could clear it with a distance driver but under no circumstances would I ever throw over a kids game so I elect to walk around the game and skip the hole. I'm almost a quarter of the way across when all of a sudden a disc comes flying overhead hits the ground just to right of the soccer field and bounces up and hits underneath a women's lawn chair she is sitting in. A single player guy mid 20s come running through grabs the disc, throws, mutters something to the women, and goes on his way. I go up and try to be a decent ambassador for the sport after encountering an a-hole to a woman who is obviously quite angry, justifiably so, and she didn't want any apologies from me, did make a comment about it not even being the first incident of the day, and I was left with my weak apology and moving on knowing that disc golf had just made another permanent enemy of the sport. Now I will say the rest of my round was fairly uneventful, other than having to wait a little for people, but by the end of the first nine I had more than made up my mind on what to think about this course.
Had I written a review after that first round it would not be kind, heck this one is not exactly kind either. The thing is that was a Saturday, the next time I played was a Tuesday, and I ended up having the entire course to myself, with literally no one else at the park, and it is a very different experience.
The problem with this course is that it mirrors the city of Murphys itself. You see Murphys is very much a tale of two cities. Murphys is for the residents a very small remote gold rush era foothills town with quaint little shops harkening back to days gone by. At certain time you can walk all the way down the sidewalks of Main Street and never see a soul. However at other times Murphys is a tourist trap gone wild with biker gangs and thousands of tourists descending upon it making those some sidewalks feel like you are elbow to elbow with everyone else on the streets of Disneyland.
This is a very difficult course to review. I know for a fact that this course has introduced a ton of people to disc golf and made a lot of new fans. And the truth is I've given other courses a pass on poor design because of their remoteness, but the problem is I know how busy this park gets but it would be hypocritical of me to say that I haven't enjoyed rounds here. So I am left with the juxtaposition of two very different courses, one that I don't think should even be in the ground due to safety concerns and one that serves a very real local need in a very remote community. On a Tuesday I would give this course a three on a Saturday I would be advocating for its removal. I split the difference and gave it a 1.5. I still don't know if this course should be in the ground, but I understand why,