Great facilities. All tees are concrete, nice tee signs with distances, and decent hole maps. Multiple pin positions on a few holes (7, 13, & 16 were the only ones I saw, but there could be more). At many of the tees, there is a bench, covered swing, or covered picnic table to sit at. Sweet!!
This course can sneak up on you. It starts off fairly easy. After hole 6, I was already starting to write my review in my head "Flat, not too challenging..."
Then I step up to hole 7. Wait, the basket is through that tiny opening to the left? Holy crap! Step up to hole 8: Holy crap! For the rest of the round, this course kicks it into high gear, with one tough technical hole after another. It made me realize its been awhile since I was blown away impressed/scared by a hole before I even teed off. This course has quite a few nailbiters on it.
This course is not the longest, but it achieves things with technical shots that no amount of length could equal, and thus doesnt play like a short course (Valley View, for example) Many longer courses than this will have many more deuce opportunities.
The holes aren't just technical, they are memorable and unique. They are very tough, some would say unfair. I've played course with tough holes that are all luck and not really fun. I thought these holes were fun, even though they force some crazy shots.
This course throws some real tricky stuff at you, but it does have a favorite trick thats repeated enough times, that I came to expect it by the end.
The trick is as follows: The hole seems like it has a normal flight path (straight, hyzer, annie) off the tee, but down near the basket theres a jumble of trees to thread through. Usually, you have several choices, but all of them are tough.
Case in point: Hole twelve is a short, very hard right curve through a tree-lined fairway. Around the curve: a dozen tree trunks in front of the basket like jail bars, all across the fairway. The biggest opening is a left curving walking path-sized route on the right side, up against the shule.
I can't think of another course that demands such precise and strategic shot placement. This is a thinking man's course. You can't just hyzer it as far as you can. Many times longer is much worse because you need it to break at the right distance to set up your second shot. Great care is needed to give yourself even a vague chance at a deuce on most holes, but there are opportunities.
The signature hole, IMO, is hole 13. The fairway heads almost 90 degrees right from the long tee, then slowly curves left down a narrow trail (where the short tee is), and then
abruptly cuts to the right into the woods, thus its shaped like this
_
)
From the long tee, to the left of the tight fairway, directly in front of the tee, is a 10 ft dropoff to the river, thus youre forced to carry the river and curve it right into an opening in the tree-lined bank, then navigate the tunnel carved into the woods that the basket is at the end of. Yikes!!!!! If you hit the back of the riverside opening, you'll be past the tunnel opening, and itll cost you 1, maybe 2 strokes, so you have to shoot about 230 and try to curve it in as hard right as you can to get further down the tunnel, without falling in the marshy river valley below.
The care needed, and the danger present here reminded me of ball golf (in a good way) at times, because this course, like in ball golf, really punishes you for straying off the fairway, also because of the numerous hazards presented on most holes.
It shows that this course has been around since 92', and even after all those years of being broken in, its still awesome. Some good courses, like good wines, improve with age. I believe this was likely the case here.
Make no mistake about it, this course is IN the woods, not just playing into or out of patches of woods. And the WILL be trees on the fairway. Lots of them. And choke points, sometimes as narrow as a walking path at points. If that doesn't make you lick your chops, then you might want to pick a different course, but if you're like me, you'll just want to know when its time for seconds.