Excellent GOLD level course with a good variety of shots and use of land. The first few holes provide a warm-up in the open before getting into the thick of the woods. I was thoroughly impressed by the variety of the woods holes including short/long, tight/open, pine corridors, cedars, and multiple approach lanes within a par 5 hole.
- Solid tee pads and signage for both blue/red positions, Discatcher baskets gobbled up putts and were easily visible.
- Enough next hole signs to make the course easy to navigate
- Clubhouse full of character with bathrooms, bar, 2 practice baskets

Amenities were lacking
- No benches, and remember these are LONG courses
- A little difficult to find this private course, Trey is really nice but the course won't look welcoming

From strictly course layout I'd rate this 5/5 as one of the best gold level courses I've played. But with the lack of amenities there are many courses that do more. Of the 4 Trey/Selah courses we thought this was the best. Don't get me wrong, all 4 are worth checking out (you'll need at least 2 full days), but in my opinion the ratings for these courses in DGCR are grossly inflated.

Trey Deuce is a course designed to test players on several components of the game: your variety of shot making, physical fitness, and the way one mentally executes. This is due to the varied terrain the course sits on featuring: 1) open, moderately wooded, and tightly wooded holes, and some holes utilizing some of each; 2) there is more elevation here than you might expect for Texas with many holes playing level, but there is some up and down, as well as the deep creek banks; 3) shot shapes of all kinds will be utilized, some are required where others have options; and 4) there is a good deal of water with a pond in play on the first two holes, and a creek for several others that sometimes you play beside and other times across it.

There are several holes that are outstanding and unique, specifically the longer holes that play over the creek (3,5,11) where you must be careful and place your tee shot in order to have a good look at the basket on your approach.

Like its northern cousin courses Selah, there are two complete sets of tees (am & pro) and each has its own tee sign. The signs look great as they are informative, in full color, and tastefully pay tribute to the ranch's primary obsession of dominos. Baskets are no problem being relatively new Discatchers.

There is a good chance that your round here will be by yourself. Plus the course plays far from the road and nowhere near any houses or other structures. You get this feeling of being away from it all and just out in the wilderness.

The owners are gracious and friendly hosts, and even though DG is not their first priority (dominos is), they have embraced the game and its players and welcome people to come and play. I was in contact with Diane via the Trey Ranch website. She is super friendly requesting we call her "Ma" and demanding hugs instead of handshakes! The family is proud of the courses and encourages people to come and play. The Saloon, where you pay and sign the waiver, has restrooms inside and is a great place to hang out, eat, and rehydrate between rounds. There is plenty of seating both inside and outside. There is even a couple practice baskets there.

Coupled with Texas Twist just a 1/3 mile down the road, and of course the Selah courses not too far away, this area makes for a great disc golf vacation with lots of challenging and diverse disc golf holes.

To me is the course overall is just not 100% awesome. There are lots of great holes, but there are parts of several holes, sometimes the tee shot, sometimes the approach, that are pretty much just throwing in a wide open field. There are many holes unique to Trey, but some others are of pretty standard design that you can find almost anywhere (13 and 17 for example). There is a lot of good disc golf terrain but there is some filler connecting the creek and wooded sections. (I understand this is what Houck had to do in using the land available, but is why I rate it less than the best of the best.)

It is kind of hard not to compare these courses to the Selah courses due to proximity and same designer. For now, understand these courses are newer than Selah and still have some wearing and breaking in to be done. That being said, I would say it appears Trey will be a little more rugged and not perfectly manicured like Selah (the difference between a farm vs a vacation resort). These courses may not be mowed as often, and the rough off the fairways is unforgivingly thick in the summer (looked nothing like the pics on DGCR that appear to be from early spring).

Surprisingly hilly and physically taxing. The course is a long walk to and from the saloon/clubhouse (top get to #1 and after #18 both) so you have to carry your water with you, but if you are playing in the TX summer sun you will wish you had more water, but of course water is heavy to carry. Just a warning to be prepared and stay hydrated. It is not quite Appalachian "adventure" golf, but more along the lines of Flyboy (if you play both Trey courses) in terms of how much energy it will take out of you.

Hole 18- where I am in the minority and defended Selah LS 14, I found this hole to be borderline ridiculous. My advice for first timers is to scout the hole completely first (if you are not too tired at that point), you don't want to play it where you think you should based on the tee sign and view from the tee. I didn't see a mando, so why anyone would play uphill in the middle of the trees along the creek the whole way is beyond me, next time I will throw out to the open grass on the left as soon as I can and more easily finish the hole. The "fairway" is essentially a snaking drainage ravine where bad lies and awkward footing are inevitable.

I admit I played in less than ideal conditions- high 90's, bright sunshine, heat advisory. All this a few weeks after the area had been affected by a 100-year flood. Hole 3 and parts of 13 were a marsh of standing water. The grass was really high, yes playable, but bordering on not fun having to look for discs in the fairway on every non-woods shot. (I might add for comparison that I played Selah the day before and it had been mowed despite the heavy rains and was currently being mowed again.) We were told they try to mow every two weeks at Trey. I know it is a job to do and is tough when it rains a lot, so just be aware that course conditions have more of a chance to be less than ideal (than say a city park).

Note- I played the Trey courses from the Red/Am tees. Suitable for my skill level and I appreciate the thought Houck put in to have 2 sets of tees for all the Trey and Selah courses.

Extremely challenging on many holes (sometimes punishing), and this was from the reds. If you want a good test of all aspects of your game, this course will definitely give it to you.

$10/day to play all day is completely reasonable.

I give these courses a 4.0 each, not quite up to the level of overall quality and maintenance of Selah, but still a solid pair of courses nonetheless and worth a trip to the East TX Houck 4.

Hospitality. Call Diane and she will meet you at the course, give you a tour of the facilities, talk your ear off and show you how to find Texas Twist from the saloon (seriously, give yourself an extra 30 minutes to socialize if this is your first time playing). You'll not meet a nicer course owner though I don't doubt that there are many nice people who run private courses elsewhere.

There are some brilliantly good holes mixed into this course. This includes holes that are just a lot of fun to play and some that have a high degree of difficulty while still giving you a fair line off the tee. The course opens with three open tee shots. Then holes 4-11 take you into the woods with more technical proficiency required. Hole 12 brings you back out into the open and 13-17 include a mix of partially open and forested holes that are somewhat less technical than the earlier wooded holes. Finally you end on 18, a supposed signature hole, which is addressed in the next section.

My favorites were 1, 3, 5, 6, 9, 11 and 14. These holes offered fair, if difficult, lines to the basket or to a specific landing for a shot at the green and required long and short, right and left turning shots off the tee.

Signage is excellent. There is one navigation issue that was between 9 and 10. After finishing 9, you must walk along the creek and take a left into an unmarked path in the young pines. It's not hard to miss and the "next tee" sign at 9's basket isn't the most clear indicator. Otherwise, finding the start is the only problem (follow the gravel driveway between the mobile home and the fence west of the Saloon and you can't miss the first tee).

The water that is available on this course was used well as was the creek which combines water and potential elevation challenges because it has eroded a very deep trench in some places.

The Saloon is a wonderful place to explore a little and rest between rounds (BYOB). I can imagine that it is a very popular place during tournaments and "42" matches on Friday nights.

Trey Deuce and Texas Twist are pay-to-play. This part of Northeast Texas got over 40 inches of rain from the remnant of a recent tropical storm. Bridges on these courses were washed away and a number of new, steel and wood bridges have been recently placed. I have little doubt that the owner's claim to have put more than $200,000 into these courses is only a conservative estimate. Paying $10 each to play these excellent courses is a bargain. Paying double would be a bargain. There's no way the owners have gotten their money back on these courses.

Hole 18 has got to be one of the worst hole designs I have ever seen. It's a plinko luckfest. It's uphill. It straddles a winding "creek" that is more of a 3'-4' deep trench that zigzags wildly through the entire length of the hole. There is no identifiable fairway. This hole is apparently designed solely to test the ability of a player to get out of trouble - because, with such narrow "lanes" (it's really a joke to call such narrow openings "lanes") it will be the very rare throw that doesn't hit a tree and carom into the creek or brush. The primary determining factor in the score on this hole is luck; just throw and pray. It's a shame that an otherwise excellent course would end with an abomination like this. I don't recall seeing any mandos on this hole. If I ever find myself at this hole again, I will throw straight left to get out in the open and throw around this hole's "fairway" to get to the basket.

Lack of meaningful elevation. Most of this course is either flat or on a hillside. Hole 2 has some elevation at the basket. Hole 3 has some elevation at the tee. It's kind of funny, but after playing these and Selah Courses it has dawned on me that in almost all cases where elevation might give a distance bonus off the tee, the designer has done his best to negate that elevation bonus. One example is on hole 3 where there are two small, recently planted trees (one dead, the other mostly dead) that were placed so that they could grow into obstacles very near the tee on hole 3 (where there would otherwise be a wide open downhill throw on a very long hole).

New-growth, thicket rough on many holes. A number of the wooded holes wind through large stands of young pine. These pine thickets are so dense that any shot that ricochets any distance into them will essentially be a two-stroke penalty. As these trees grow and the lower limbs die and fall off, this will get better.

There are a number of forgettable holes on this course, including a couple of nearly wide open hyzer shots. Trees may be on the way, but they either aren't there now or have died since planting because cypress trees just aren't going to grow on a dry, sandy hillside.

General Houckishness. If you like a 500-800 foot, par 5 holes that require three midrange placement shots through exceedingly narrow, well-defined lanes to reach putting distance, then you'll like Mr. Houck's courses. Holes 7, 8 and 10 employ this kind of design. You will also like this course if you are insanely accurate off the tee. I don't care for them. The problem as I see it is that the lanes offered are usually narrow enough to bring luck into the equation too often. When I walked up to a hole on Deuce that the tee sign shows one or two routes to the basket, I know I'm going to love it. When I walk up and see spaghetti on the sign (5 routes to the landing area and then 5 routes to the next, I know I probably won't enjoy the hole.

If you pick the long tees, you will be faced with super long holes with very tight fairways. If you pick the short tees, you will get some holes that are just too short and apparently designed for novices. There is no in between option other than just mixing tees.

Having played the long tees and checking out the short tees on each hole, I think that it is a shame that the course doesn't allow a third option that includes a mixture of the short tees on the long holes and the long tees on the short holes. Those with lesser arms may find the shorter tees a little more suited to their abilities on holes over 500' but may also have enough distance to prefer a 244' tee shot to a sub-200' shot on some of the par 3's. Having a third set of tee designations would accomplish this.

The owner referred to other potential courses coming to this area as part of a commitment to make it a multi-course destination for disc golf. I certainly hope that any land owner that undertakes the commitment to build more championship level courses in this area chooses to go in a direction that will provide some diversity in design approach so that you don't feel like you are just playing a more difficult, watery, elevated, etc. version of Selah.

Both the Trey Texas Ranch courses seem to have a higher level of difficulty than either of the Selah courses. Even from the short tees, they are not particularly beginner friendly.
Deuce is an excellent course. But it has some holes that are not particularly good nor fun in my opinion and enough of them to keep this course from being top tier.

Trey Deuce pairs well with Texas Twist, offering a wider variety of terrain and settings than its counterpart. The course offers some technical holes through a stretch of pine trees and a small cluster of woods, counterbalancing the open conditions found elsewhere. The two extremes are alternated between and intermixed to great effect, with holes playing from open to wooded and vice versa, offering everything from tight windows to open bombs. Hole length is extremely varied - my unscientific sense being moreso than on Texas Twist and the Selah courses - with everything from sub-200' holes to the monstrous hole 10, which is almost 750' from the reds (!). Shot design is correspondingly varied, as is par - there's everything here from deuce-or-dies to birdieable 4s to 5s you'd be happy to par. A pond provides a few scary moments early on, and a creekbed makes several appearances, intensifying approaches or bordering fairways.

Trey Deuce has some really memorable moments. The stretch of pines the middle third of the course plays through is very beautiful, and hosts a great pair of par 4s in 7 and 8, which require precision and thoughtful navigation: failing to set up subsequent shots either through planning or execution can easily leave you in a bind. 15 is a magnificently tight tunnel shot that forces the slightest of S curves rather than being dead straight; it's great take on a common motif. And 18 is a closer for the ages, a monstrously tree-studded uphill climb that forces planning and precision; luck helps, but it's par-able even if you suffer a tree kick or two (which you almost inevitably will). Such high points stand with the best holes I've played.

Concrete tees are fantastic, as is the Houck Design signage.

Alongside the high points are a fair few average holes. Many of these result from the open terrain, which is primarily what prevents me from giving Trey Deuce a higher rating. Houck tries to mitigate this openness with all the tricks in his arsenal - a water-backed pin on 1, a guarded pin on 3, a tunnel shot off the tee on 16, etc - but he nevertheless can't escape the essential lack of obstacles on a third to half of the course's holes. This openness prevents Trey Deuce from achieving the one-hole-to-the-next magnificence of Selah Lakeside, or even the more consistent quality of Texas Twist. These are high standards to be sure: Trey Deuce is great, I just didn't find it to be an all-timer.

Openness aside, some of the holes here are more straight-forward and less unique than is found on Trey Deuce's Texas counterparts: 4 is a shoulder-shruggingly standard tunnel shot on a course that already has a great one, and 6 seems like it just wants to funnel you to 7, especially from the reds. I felt like there's a greater fluctuation of hole quality and memorableness here than in Texas Twist or Selah.

When I played here in April, grooming was a significant issue: knee-high grass really put a damper on things. My sense from reading other reviews and hearing word on the message boards is that grooming has improved, and I would enthusiastically recommend playing the Trey Ranch courses under most any conditions, but it's worth a mention. Consistent grooming does make a difference in how you'll experience the course, given the numerous open drives.

While I felt that Trey Deuce was the least of the Selah/Trey quartet, it's still a high level, picturesque, and well-designed course that is well worth playing. The openness keeps it from the top tier in my mind, but if this is second level, I've led a good disc golfing life.

The Trey Ranch courses are $10 for unlimited play for the day. Come play here and give Trey your money!

Trey Ranch is a special place and it offers a gratifyingly unique disc golf experience. It is well off the beaten path on an enormous farm. It was a joy to meet Trey, as he was very hospitable and seemed excited to host these courses on his property. The saloon is an interesting place and has a lot of character - it definitely seems like a cool place to hang out. This type of atmosphere - combined with two Houck-designed courses - is sure to offer a tremendous day of golf.

The Trey Deuce course starts within two walls of trees to the left of the saloon. There is a nice course map and you continue heading downhill to the first tee. All of the equipment is top notch, with fantastic tee signs at both positions, large and comfortable concrete tees, and new baskets. The different tees do a good job of changing distances and the feel of a hole on many occasions.

This is definitely one of the most varied courses that I have played. The course winds through sections of the property that feel completely different. The first couple holes play relatively open around water carries. Things tighten up on hole 6, which is the first of several holes that take you through what seems to be a pine tree farm. I was taken aback when we entered this part, as it is strikingly beautiful and a completely different atmosphere than the previous holes. The last few holes play through a patch of woods. That was my favorite part of the course, as I felt the holes here were the most technical and were impressively designed given the small wooded area.

Holes 15 and 18 are worth special mention, with their extremely tight lines allowing little room for error. 15 is one of the best designed (and hardest) ace runs I have seen, while 18 may be the craziest hole I have seen. 18 plays uphill among many trees with a stream constantly zig-zagging through the hole. Pictures don't do this one justice.

Not as long as Texas Twist, but a big arm is well-rewarded here on the eight par 4's and par 5. On the other hand, the shorter holes require extreme accuracy. I like courses that offer both extremes.

There is a lot of risk/reward type shots throughout the course. With six holes incorporating water and with some strong winds, you will think twice whether you would like to make a run at the basket or play it safe and lay up short. There is also a good deal of this within the pine trees. They are open enough to tempt you into bombing a shot from the tee, but it is punishing to get stuck under one of these huge pines. Your other option is to play it safe and remain in the alley, though probably not throwing as far.

This course definitely has the feel of "adventure golf" which has its positives and negatives. No amenities near the course as far as water, bathrooms, benches, or trash cans. Once you start the course, you will be pretty far off from where you parked and there's a decently long walk back to you car from 18. Make sure you come here prepared.

I greatly enjoyed the last few holes on this course, as well as a few in the middle, but some of the holes left me wanting more. None of the holes are poorly designed, but there are many holes that are straight-forward. I know some will disagree about this.

Navigation can be a little tricky, although the map is very helpful. It is most difficult when transitioning to and from the pine tree area.
The course also requires some extra walking and careful navigation around the streams, if that is something that turns you off.

The disc golf experience that Trey Ranch offers is one of a kind. I like Texas Twist better, but this course has terrific variety. If you appreciate playing courses that have great variety among its settings and types of holes that it offers, you should really enjoy this one.

You have to sign a waiver and pay $10 at the saloon, but I thought the money was worth it. $10 being the daily rate - and the fact that these courses take awhile to play - I suggest spending a full day just playing the courses here. Since it's only about 15 minutes away from Selah Ranch, this is one of the most satisfying destinations for disc golf. Skeptical or not, I encourage you to see what all the hype is about.