- McAllister Park is home to two epic, gold-level, 18-hole courses: Wabash Woods and Wabash Washout. The two courses are opposite sides of the same coin: while the differences between the two stand out at first, after a few play-throughs, the similarities in design begin to stand out. Wabash Woods, as the name suggests, is a heavily wooded affair. Wabash Washout, located on the site of an old municipal ball golf course, and is more open (though still with its fair share of deep rough and trees to avoid) and lengthier, with rolling elevation. Both courses force successful shot-shaping to landing zones, often a couple of times per hole, in order to score well. These courses are about managing the length, navigating the hazards, finding the landing zones, and executing a wide variety of shots.
- Elevation: Wabash Woods is flat, flat, flat. Not sure I've played 18 holes this flat. The only rises in land are the small berm of earth upon which hole #10's tee is located; and a slightly rolling fairway on # 17.
- Tees are currently natural (a couple might've had gravel IIRC), marked with two orange flags. Each hole has two tees, long and short, except for hole # 10, for which we only could located the one tee. No tee signage exists, but the navigation and flow are all pretty obvious, aided by "next tee" arrows on each basket. In fact, the flow between the holes, as well as the spacing, is well done. Also, the design makes sense, if that makes sense. At no point did I look at a hole and say, "Hmm, I wonder what happens here." Because of the excellently defined fairways, and a design aesthetic that follows a sort of solid internal logic throughout, the lack of signs was not a factor in our round here.
- Landing zones/ route choices/ risk v. reward: especially from the longs, Wabash Woods is all about hitting the fairways, staying out of the thick woods, hitting landing zones, managing which out of multiple routes to take, recovering from brutal schule, and taking risks through the narrow gaps of trees to attempt to bite off more fairway in order to score better. This is one of the best heavily wooded designs I've personally played: every hole is exceptionally designed... nothing feels gimmicky or weird, or "off." The designer(s) really hit this one out of the park. Each hole is eminently fair. There's always more than enough space to work with on a hole: provided you're hitting your lines and getting to the landing zones. The landing zones aren't all obvious, so there's some thinking man's golf to be had for more cerebral, more talented players as they are forced to choose the level of aggression vs. managing the narrow, tree-filled fairways. Hole #'s 6, 8, 12, and 17 are long, epic, multi-landing zone holes with well-defined fairways, awesome pin positions, and challenging fairways. From the longs, these are all gold-level, big boy, serious business, disc golf. The shorts make this course much more manageable, but still will wallop most casual players. The shorter holes (from both long and short tees) help break up some of the (awesome) insanity of the much longer holes, without being throwaway or cheap.
- Absolutely gorgeous wildlife factor at play here. There is an INDOT-designated migratory bird pathway on site, so entire flocks of birds can be heard (loudly) roosting in nearby trees. We also saw (over two rounds): a coyote crossing hole # 14's fairway with prey in its mouth, a hawk swooping down on a putter, a living marmot, a dying marmot (hanging out on hole # 7's fairway), a living snake, and a dead, headless snake. I, personally, read all the Animal Omens on this course as generally favorable, ha.
- Right next to the parking lot is the old golf course's driving range, which now serves as a disc golf driving range. Neat.