- brand new blue banded DiscGolfPark Pro baskets
- new huge turf tees which are nice and level
- nice full color tee signs
- really unique camera mounts at most holes
- good mix of hole lengths
- lots of wood chips on fairways to avoid mud
- hole numbers on baskets
- multiuse park has an area devoted entirely to disc golf
- navigation is mostly straightforward and obvious
- paths between holes are outlined with dead branches
- excellent wooded technical challenge
- next tee arrows on baskets

- tee signs are mounted almost on the ground
- can be pretty buggy
- rough is pretty thick in areas
- brand new course so fairways are still a little rough with stumps
- hole 6 basket is too close to walking path
- entirely flat
- unfortunate amount of garbage on course
- some areas have woodchips piled too deep; uneven footing
- no real amenities

Van Horn Woods is a new course that is well put together. Amongst all the other wide open municipal park Chicago niners, this one feels like a bit of a gem. The course mostly plays through woods with challenging technical lines but also reasonable fairways. The baskets are brand new and top notch with hole numbers and next tee directional arrows. The tees are turf, which isn't my favorite, but they are huge, level, and brand new. As long as they aren't wet they should be great. The tee signs are typical DiscGolfPark signs, which are nice and include the relevant info plus full color maps. My main beef with these is this trend of mounting them near ground level. I don't get this; they are harder to read, harder to photograph, and likely to take more of a beating from the elements.

As is typical of Chicagoland, the course is almost entirely flat and maybe starts to feel a bit repetitive. However, this course was well done with woodchips to keep things dry, navigational paths clearly marked, and generally good park maintenance. While this is another municipal park, the area for disc golf is fairly isolated. The course is still a bit rough since all of the more mature plants were just cut out for the fairways but I expect it to keep improving with regular maintenance.

Hole 6 was the only one I didn't like; you are throwing towards the walking path and it is probably only 5-10 ft behind the basket. This was not a good design for safety; the rest of the course doesn't have much of an issue there. One thing I've never seen anywhere else are all the camera mounts to film yourself throwing drives or putting. This could be seen as a little gimmicky, but it's a really cool idea if you are working on your form or creating content. I can't imagine this course getting really busy but I hope if it does people recognize that filming yourself when a group is waiting behind you is in poor taste.

If you like wooded courses, this is a fun one with a decent mix of hole lengths. None of them are especially long or short, but they all have respectable distance and a nice intermediate challenge level. I was kind of between a 2.5 and a 3 here, but I think the 2.5 is fair. The amount of garbage on the course was disappointing; hopefully this is cleaned up over time. Nothing to go out of your way for, but there are plenty of other courses around. If you're making a day of it this one is worth playing.