Pros:
I'll start by saying that this course is quite literally in my back yard. I'll try not to let the convenience of the location color my review too much. That said, if you live north of Raleigh and outside of 540, finding a convenient place to play can be a tough task. Sure, there is Cedar Hills, which offers some of the best holes in the triangle area. However, unless it's on your way home, good luck summoning the will to consistently fight through the evening rush to play/practice.
Enter this brand new nine hole course on Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary. The course is set on a gently rolling tract of land between the campus and the nine hole golf course (also owned by the seminary). Each hole is marked with a detailed sign including distance, par, and a cursory map. The tees are now filled in with concrete, which is a huge improvement over what I suspect the original plan was (some sort of sand mixture and large gravel).
Now to the holes. Given that the course plays over mostly open rolling hills, I'm somewhat impressed with how the designers have made good use of the bordering treelines to create natural fairways. Outside of the tunnel through a grove on hole #5 and a shot through two staggered outcrops of trees on #8 you won't find a lot of tight control shots on the course (actually, #2 does feature a wide hole right off the tee). What the course excels on is letting you take a series of forgiving, but enjoyable drives in the 200'-300' range. The most challenging hole, #7, whose sign measures it at 500', is a mostly wide open shot which forces you to control your drive and shoot it through a gap between two groves around the half way mark. It's a fairly basic shot, but the gap falls at a range where most casual players likely top out at combining distance and accuracy. The next hole, which is my personal favorite, is an upshot that again requires a gap shot to get around a cluster of trees to the left that hides the basket.
This all unfolds over roughly 10 acres of beautiful rolling grassland. And since it's about 2 minutes off of route 1 it is extremely accessible.
Cons:
As I mentioned earlier, most of the course is wide open. This really limits the diversity of holes you'll find. If you want to really test your accuracy over long distance you'll be left a little wanting. There aren't really that many landmarks out in the open either, so gauging your distance on the more open shots can be a little tricky.
The real con here is the condition of the rough on the middle holes. It's been cleared out a little since the course first became operational, but the cluster of trees backing up hole 5 is a beast. And that's not even mentioning the bramble which you have to work through if you don't nail your shot through the tunnel. These aren't dealbreakers by any means, though, as you'll have to really lose track of your shot to lose a disc here.
Other Thoughts:
As nine hole courses go, you couldn't really ask for much more. The course will give you an enjoyable hour of easy to moderate open holes over gently sloping hills to go with excellent signage and hardware. Care and effort have been put into designing the holes, especially given the limitations of having almost no brush or features on the fairways themselves. Is it a destination course? No, but I don't feel like that should be the expectation. What it is, though, is the only set of chains north of Cedar Hills. And it's a darn good set of them.