Pros:
Tucked into the back corners of this scenic campus lies a gem of a little course.
+ Outstanding mix of holes. From short and technical wooded holes, to wide open mashes, and everything in-between, this course has some of everything.
+ Encourages a great variety of shot shapes from your bag. Big hyzers, to careful turnovers, to pure tunnels, and everything in-between, across all different distances.
+ Nice use of elevation. Some wooded downhill throws where you crash into the green, some challenging uphill rips, and finally on holes 16 and 17 the fun wide-open downhills that everyone loves.
+ Three teepads on almost every hole offers enjoyment for all skill levels. The concrete white teepads are especially popular, and should be equally enjoyable for almost everyone. For true beginners, red teepads are clearly marked by stumps in the ground, and are a very friendly play. Strong advanced players wanting to mix things up can play from the concrete blue tees, but see below.
+ Several holes have multiple pin positions available, mixing up the experience even further from time to time.
+ Fairways have been well worn-in, making for a smooth play.
+ Good Discatcher baskets, clear tee signs at the white tees, a great course map at the start, and some navigational arrows in the woods all ensure a smooth experience.
+ Largely manages to stay out of the way of other campus facilities, only briefly flirting with a baseball field, some roads, and a ropes course. Otherwise the course is quietly tucked into hidden woods.
+ All in all, an incredibly fun course design that will appeal to pretty much everyone, and that can be replayed over and over again.
Cons:
- The long tees are somewhat overgrown, and seem to rarely get played. And the more they get overgrown, the less appeal they have, and then they deteriorate even more, etc., a vicious cycle.
- Without those long tees in reasonable condition, this is not a challenging course for serious advanced players. Though I still maintain that they will have a lot of fun racking up birdies on all of the different shot types on offer.
- The tees, fairways, and baskets for holes 9-12 all pile on top of each other in a frightening four-way intersection. At best it's confusing navigation, at worst it's a safety nightmare. Not sure how this happened, since the rest of the course is so smoothly laid out.
- Navigation is generally good in the woods, but the pointers all vanish out in the open, and you may have to do some hunting and searching in these sections to find the next tee. The course map does help with this.
- Some inconsistency in teepad quality, as a few of the white tees were natural instead of the usual concrete. But these were generally on short holes where it wasn't a major issue.
Other Thoughts:
For a course that's only 4600 ft. long (from the white teepads), this is about as fun of a course as you can possibly have. Given how short and modest it is, nobody will mistake this for an en elite championship-caliber destination. But for what it is, this excellent design massively exceeded my expectations, and I had a real blast. Absolutely worth a stop if you're in the area.