The disc golf course at the University of Richmond shows its Jekyll side for the first two holes, with excellent signage and short but well manicured and lightly wooded holes with a real fancy campus vibe. Then you have to embark on a long, confusing transition to #3 for a blind, hard turning downhill hole into the woods. After that is another long walk to #4, a short shot through the trees. The course turns Hyde in terms of holes (though not in terms of signage and tee pads) with thick woods and the sort of touch shots that demand your most reliable mid-range discs, and beat those discs up when you don't put them where you mean too. You don't come out of the woods until #12, for two picture perfect lakeside holes, and then right back into the woods for a tight uphill shot on #14. The course finishes with its kinder face, with #17 and #18 giving you two longer, more open, pretty holes to finish on a high note.
This course is multi-faceted, and will challenge most aspects of most players' games. With only one set of tees, and playing mostly 200-350 feet, it's not built for the big arms, but otherwise you'll need to put drivers where you want to, and shape touch shots in the woods just right. This is the sort of course where the more you play it, the more you can figure out how best to play it. Most of the woods holes are tight, a few perhaps unreasonably so, but maybe the designers meant for you to play two well placed mid-range shots, rather than one drive. These holes play around turns left and right, up and down hills, and the effect is the sort of course where scoring spreads can vary pretty widely I'd think; stay on course and you'll be par all the way, but let up for one throw and you're off in the thicket, looking at a double. Players with good control are rewarded here, but those whose strength is off the tee can catch up a bit on the more mixed/open holes.
The course at UR is somewhat complementary to the area's one sort of high-end course, Bryan Park. Both play over an attractive landscape featuring some impressive trees and idyllic water views. Bryan Park is a classic city park landscape, long, mostly open, and most holes playing in straight line. UR is fairly short, but does give Richmonders a taste of the top-end DG landscape that can be found on some college campus courses. This nice taste, however, is offset by a couple holes with a high potential for losing discs (#3 especially) and a few more that many players might consider unreasonably tight and wooded. The signage at UR is top-notch, but even so there are two transitions where first time players could easily get off course - from #2 to #3 (walk across the road and bear right past the sorority houses to the edge of the woods; it's a long ways) and then from #3 to #4 (cross the bridge, turn left and then follow the path right all the way behind the tennis courts), and a bunch of next tee signs would help a lot. The tee pads are rubber mats over level ground, so not concrete but still pretty good, and the landscape and scenery are as fine as any course in the area, however.
Overall I rate this course as Good, and worth seeing if you're in the area and it suits your taste. Taken as a whole, this course has a bunch of good holes, and the landscape, signage, and tee pads are a plus. The frustration factor introduced by some other aspects of the course, however, must be acknowledged. Bring a map the first time through, and your best touch game, and you should be glad you made your way to this course.
Favorite Hole - #12 - straightforward hole out of the woods plays to basket set right on the lake.