Pros:
+ Practice basket and lost disc box right before hole1.
+ Tee signs are laminated paper on a post or tree, but they do the job with all the info and diagrams you need... mostly.
+ A few notewothy elevation challenges and some appreciated natural features like a stream and some dense tree cover give the course signs of life.
Cons:
- The tee areas are just worn and wrinkled segments of carpet or patches of dirt. Only 10 and 11 have concrete by simple virtue of the fact that they are on the walking path of school grounds.
- The baskets are more than a little old. Some are a bit rusty. Some are noticeably damaged but not unplayably so. Plus, many holes utilize the same basket for their targets.
- As a result of that fact, many holes utilize the same exact fairways: 2&18, 3&17 and 11 intersects 8&9 just for a few examples.
- And as a result of that, navigation here is a nightmare. I ended up skipping two and a half holes because I just couldn't be asked to figure out their labyrinth.
- As it is at a middle school, it has a small window of playability.
- If it is meant to be for middle schoolers, then aren't these distances a bit too long and the obstacles a bit too demanding??
Other Thoughts:
I do have a favorite hole here, though. To my mind, hole6 was the nicest to look at and most fun to play because of that creek you throw over and the nice tree pepper further down the fairway. My least favorite hole is a more difficult question to answer.
At first glance, everything that I like about a course is here. There are not one but two nice downhill tee-offs. There are one or two water features to deal with. There is a decent balance between wide open and wooded fairways, and it's a quiet place to play. So, why the 1.5?
Well, maybe I was particularly stupid or impatient during that day in the 95-degree heat, but I had the most difficult time finding my way around. I try to use the maps on Udisc as little as possible because that's not a feature of the course. I'm there to review the course-- not the reliability of an app. That's not something that a disc golf course ought to rely on. Yes, this is the Information Age, but I'm not happy if I have to take out my phone every three minutes just to find out where to go next or to verify if I'm walking in the right direction. Put simply: navigation is a headache here. If it weren't for a pair of locals, I would have had no idea where to find holes7, 10 or 11. Then, once I got ahead of them, Where was the basket for hole14? Where was the tee pad for hole16? Where was all of hole15? I saw the little numbered arrows suspended from many of the baskets, but there were some instances when they didn't help.
Not just that, but the shared fairways are a hazard, too. I almost hit somebody with one of my throws because there was a hill blocking my view ahead, and I didn't know that the hole I was playing had a shared fairway. Luckily, my throw missed, and they were a good sport about it after I apologized. But something tells me that kind of thing happens a lot here on busy days. Shared fairways are seldom a good idea.
I get the feeling that this course used to be a 9-hole course judging by how holes1 through 9 play. And if it were still one today, I don't think that I would have at all minded. If I try to imagine the removal of the back9, I can see a well put together collection of fairways that's easy to follow. We don't have that here. We have a confusing plate of spaghetti that requires you to double back, criss-cross where you've been and scout ahead not just to spot the basket but to make sure there aren't people.
In closing, the good parts of Pine Grove don't make up for its bad parts, but don't let it escape your attention that there are still good parts. Holes7 through 9, for example, give some nice challenges. And if I hadn't almost hit a fellow disc golfer, I might have been abit more charitable to its layout. I won't say it's worth traveling to, but if you're a local then it's fine.