Welp, here's the first review since renovations were made in February 2020:

- Plenty of parking right by first tee.
- Good use of the few scattered trees to make the holes more intriguing than open field holes, and with the new longer hole lengths birdies aren't easy to come by even for intermediate players.
- #9 is back, with the new basket tucked by the tree line with a water hazard about 20-25ft beyond it.
- Nice Discatcher baskets.
- Thanks to new renovations (more about that below), every hole now has a tee sign again, so there's no longer any confusion about where to throw from.
- Nice city park, with the course isolated away from all the other park amenities.

- Very marshy the day I went, and from prior reviews and the course description it sounds like that's a very frequent problem here. Had to get my feet wet multiple times just walking the fairways or to pickup my disc, but I suppose all the puddles do make for additional makeshift "water hazards".
- The basket for #8 is really tucked back into the edge of the woods, making it really hard to spot. Completely blind from the tee, which is fine, but it seems silly to have the only way to get to it be by literally making a U back towards the tee. Why not just move the basket 30ft out towards the flagpole? For those playing here for the first time, just throw straight at or beyond the flagpole, then wander towards the woods and you'll eventually see the basket tucked back in there...
- No formal tee pads, just grass. However, a number of holes (#2, 4, 6, 7, and 9) do have a landscaping timber anchored deep into the grass to mark the tee line. They don't stick up much at all, so they work ok.
- The new homemade tee signs, now about 8 months old I believe, are already fading from the sun. And only some of them list the hole distances. Would be nice to see more permanent tee signs and distances listed for every hole, as the distances are hard to judge with as few of trees as there are.
- The really open and flat terrain isn't particularly interesting. Good opportunities to bomb it, but you don't need much creativity here. Guess that makes it good for beginners to learn the basics.
- It's a kind of long walk from #9 back to the parking lot or to the first tee to play it again to make a round of 18.

- Have to really thank Shrop856 for the great work revamping the course earlier this year!! Great to see tee signs installed, and contrary to all the prior reviews, the brambles/undergrowth seem to all be gone now. Like the new longer distances too.

- Also exciting to hear that a back nine will eventually be built in the woods here, can't wait to see what those will look like.

- The first tee is actually at the corner of the lake closer to the parking lot (not where it's shown on the course map uploaded here). It's not hard to find, but just giving everyone a heads up.

+ Plenty of wide open space to practice driving and approaching.
+ The course is kept away from all other features in the park so you won't risk hitting anyone.
+ The baskets are sturdy, highly visible and clearly numbered. But...

- ...Undergrowth completely surrounds some baskets. This will make putting annoying in the warmer months with plants scratching at your legs. This is weird considering the rest of the course is well mowed.
- There are no indications on or near the baskets of where to go to find the next tee.
- What's worse, there are absolutely no tee pads or tee signs to begin with. This makes the proper layout impossible to determine and play.
- The whole course from start to finish is flat and wide open with a delicate peppering of trees. Nothing changes here.
- Even after a light rain, this course turns into a marshland.
- Where was hole 9?

Remarkably, I do have a favorite hole here. Hole 6 offers the only real challenge by having to poke through a small gathering of trees surrounding the basket. My least favorite hole is hole 9 because it doesn't exist. Or maybe it does, but I couldn't find it. For a course claiming to have nine holes, it's a big deal when eleven percent of the course is missing.

Anyway, I was not happy with The Shire. The baskets were the best thing about the course infrastructure if only because literally everything else was missing, as I and others have said. There are no tee areas, there are no tee signs, and there are no next hole signs. I would say that this course more resembles a firing range where a player can choose whatever target they wish and give themselves a challenge. And maybe there is something to be said for that.

I am starting to see that it may be the intent of some courses to take a 'less is more' approach. Perhaps some players prefer to take their own routes through courses if they do not like being given a rigid layout to follow. It is possible that some players would rather create their own adventure from basket to basket instead of obeying a predetermined path. It would certainly make for good training. And if that was the intent here, then it accomplishes that job blandly, but I won't knock someone for getting enjoyment at this place. All courses deserve to exist, but some are much worse than others.

So, as I review it from my own perspective, I cannot say that I had fun here. I prefer predetermined paths in my disc golf. I prefer to know where to start, what direction to throw, how far to throw and where to end. As far as The Shire goes, only the endpoints exist. Nothing else guides the player at this boring, flat and open portion of land. Avoid it after a rain. Avoid it if you're seeking a well-presented and whole disc golf experience. Perhaps simply avoid it altogether.

Neighborhood park with baskets in various spots / difficult to navigate / couldn't find basket #9

+ One or two really nice basket placements that incorporate the trees in the park (I liked the setting for #6 so much I took a picture)

+ Not a "course" as much as it is a practice spot: you could bring newbies here to give them a sense of throwing distances at baskets / upshots / putting

- No tees, no signs, no map

- Much of the course is low, and can be really muddy

- With no map and no tee signs, it took me a while to figure out the layout. I threw at some wrong baskets, wandered around alot, and eventually figured most of it out

- I never found the small concrete tee pads mentioned in another review, so I just threw from near the preceding basket

- I never found basket #9 (but I didn't look all that hard, as I had driven two hours to play the two 18's in the Vineland area)

~ I carry a rangefinder that I hardly ever need - except on courses like this. This area is so wide open that it's difficult to judge distances (plus, there's no map, no recorded lengths or teepads). I found myself wandering out to a basket to confirm it's number, then walking back to the preceding basket, and using the scope to figure out what I was dealing with. So, at least I got in a lot of walking and rangefinder use!

~ Wide open and good for practice if the course is dry. If I lived in the area, I'd bring out a bag of discs and use the Shire for practicing shots of various lengths, for trying out new discs, for introducing new players to the idea of playing a course

~ So it's "poor" as a course, but "good" as a practice area. I split the difference and rated it a 1.5

good course for beginners and kids

water geese and tees hard to find

Being an amateur I like this course to practise on. It is wide open and few trees to run into.Tees are hard to find. Concrete slabs 4 inch by 24 inch set in ground and no markers. We found first tee and from there we teed off from one basket to the next. Never played the ninth hole we just reverse played the eight holes back to the start. The bad points are it is a city park so there are other people around, but they are mainley at the playground. It floods when it rains and at times there are geese drawn to the pond. Take a rag to wipe the disc off because there can be a lot of poop from them. All in all I think this is a good course to hack around on and kids wont get agravated because there is only brush along the seventh hole.

It exists
Decent park

No tees or markers
Flat and open
Couldn't find hole 9

If you are in South Jersey you don't have many options, so this is a nice addition. Nice new baskets and some creative placements help make this 9 hole course worth playing. However, I wasn't able to find hole 9. The map showed on the other side of the creek, but I had to walk over a guardrail to get there. I walked a bit into an overgrown muddy area to a sign that read Park Closed. I never saw a basket and felt like I was trespassing. So, I played 7 one more time because it was my favorite hole. I was making up tees since there were no markers. I approximated based on the map. On the whole, it will do, but don't go out of your way.