Pros:
• Tight, well wooded fairways make for some nice finesse shots, requiring control. Good place to hone your approach/upshot skills.
• Relatively challenging for holes of these distances: 132' - 189'.
• Decent balance of L/R straight fairways, with a few holes suitable for baby spike hyzer and spike annies.
• Baskets in good shape.
• Very low traffic combined with short, compact layout makes for quick rounds. First round took a while due to navigation, but subsequent rounds only took about 20 minutes.
• Small, very humble tee markers leave much to be desired, but they do let you know where to shoot from.
• Particularly well located for a round before or after U of M football/basketball games.
Cons:
• Holes feel redundant, not much variety. Bring a putter, mids optional, don't bother with drivers.
• Navigation: 1st hole starts in an awkward, hard to find spot. Course is criss-crossed with paths, some of which aren't part of the course, so finding the next tee isn't always obvious - PRINT THE MAP.
• Tee markers are 1"x2" furring strips extending several inches out of the ground top couple of inches painted white with hole # in black marker - hard to spot against white snow in winter (snow covers the unpainted wood) as well as well wooded paths if there's no snow (it's tough to find a specific piece of wood in the woods). Would really help if they used florescent paint instead of white. They aid in navigation, but just barely, as they're hard to spot.
• OK during fall and winter (i.e. football season). Don't even bother during the spring and summer - gets very overgrown during peak season with little routine maintenance.
• Parking - what parking?
Other Thoughts:
Pioneer's a one trick pony; the short, controlled finesse shot -but does that fairly well. Every hole on the course is quite aceable (but not easily so), and should be deuced if played well... but you won't deuce them all. Tight fairways leave little room for error: go long, nose up and hyzer out, or just have one get away from you, and what should be a deuce could be a 4 or lost disc. Leave the fairway and the rough gets very thick, very quickly - much more forgiving in fall & winter. I'd rate it a 1/2 disc higher if it were more playable for more of the year.
During the right time of year, it's good for a quick,fun round if you're in the area with time to kill (and up for a round of tunnel/finesse shots with your putter). I played 3 rounds with only a Challenger and a Comet, and had a good time, but wasn't expecting much, and only played because I was in the area with 90 minutes and nothing to do.
Despite navigation issues, course actually flows pretty well from basket to next tee- once you get the hang of it. But the fact that no one's really gonna plan to be here means they're unlikely to print the map before-hand. This only makes the spotty navigation and hard to find tee markers more of an issue for spur of the moment, impromptu rounds.
I had fun, but Pioneer's not worth any sort of trip to play here. Nearby Bandemer is more complete course.