North Carolina Courses

[pmay5]

This was posted yesterday on the CADL FB page:

Body Armor State Games DG Championship!
June 11 at Hilltop Needmore Town Park & Reserve (Formerly Crooked Creek Golf Club) for your chance to play this one time only temporary course!
I have created the course keeping in mind it can be mundane sometimes playing disc golf course on a traditional golf course.
The design of Hilltop Needmore DGC leverages the woodlines, water features, and some of the immense elevation changes. (Holes 5, 6, 12, 13, 17, & 18.) Hole 13 has an -86 foot drop in elevation from tee pad to fairway.
Early Friday, June 10th, the course will be setup for practice rounds. Saturday, June 11th, we will have a two round/shotgun start event.

Thanks Jay Pontier for all you do!!

[BrotherDave]

Originally Posted by Koto

Been playing The Patriot in Kernersville about once a week here lately and man could it be a great course if some of those open holes had any sort of obstacle other than making the long tees 400+ feet. Reminds me a bit of Zebulon in that regard.

Yeah Schwarz really under utilized that property.

[Olorin]

Originally Posted by pmay5

Fire Mountain is a new course in Cherokee, NC.
It is on the Qualla Boundary of the Eastern Band of the Cherokee, so governed by their laws.

I played Fire Mountain in Cherokee on Opening Day and it is legit! They did a mind boggling amount of work to move huge stones to make landscaped stone steps and stone benches. The holes along the river are fantastic.

There are 3 practice baskets in separate areas, then it's about a 1/3 mile hike to hole 1. As you walk up and see the immaculately landscaped stone steps you know that you are in a special place.

The land that the course is on is in my Top 10 for NC disc golf venues. I was fortunate to run into one of the designers and he told me that unfortunately they were unable to use some surrounding hills because it is owned by the Native Americans and is part of the Blue Ridge Parkway property. That's a shame because that would have added even more elevation changes, but they had to work within the constraints they had. The land the course is on is still great, but it's just missing some elevation changes that the surrounding hills temptingly have.

There is still some work to be done and some more clearing is necessary on a couple of fairways (esp 11 Long!) and near some greens (9 & 18) but the course has potential to be a Top 25 NC course. Many people might eventually put it in their NC Top 10.

The drive out to the mountains is peaceful and refreshing, and after my round I stopped to watch a herd of elk grazing calmly by the road. Those beasts are huge!

This course is well worth the trip so go out of your way and play there!

[Olorin]

Tom Brown in Sparta has turned out very well. A copious amount of navigational arrows point your way make navigation a breeze.

The most distinctive feature of the course is that holes 11-14 all climb steeply up the mountain, so bring your hiking boots. The rise in elevation from tee 11 to basket 14 is well over 100 feet of elevation gain; it is the greatest increase in elevation over 4 holes in all of NC.

Some holes have baskets perched on epic boulder formations that are quite scenic.

One of the biggest negative features can be fixed over time, but it will take a great deal of work. In places there are huge piles of logs and wood that your disc can get stuck in. These can be removed, but hauling them off a steep mountain will require some heavy equipment or a massive amount of manpower to haul away. These wood piles are just a result of clearing out the trees to make a new course. The area is kind of remote and sparsely populated, so I don't know how active the local club is, but I hope that this can be done over time.

One item remains to be seen how it will play out with the spring and summer growth... poison ivy, especially around the basket on hole 11. On a previous visit to the course, the basket for hole 1 was right in the middle of a patch of thick poison ivy that had a radius of about 80 ft all around the basket. I hope they can tame this and keep the PI at bay.

This course is well worth playing!

Because I've been on an ongoing 23 year quest to play every play every course in NC I very rarely go back to play courses I've played. Every return visit means missing out on a new course that I could have played, so for me, a high compliment is to say that I would return to play there again. In the case of Tom Brown I have definite hopes to return there again to play the course!

[Olorin]

Stan McDaniel has been laboring for a couple of years at Dry Creek in Monroe, and he has diabolically created the longest permanent course in NC. It is over 9000 ft and should have the highest SSA of any NC course. I will be interested to see how the SSA compares to Angry Beaver.

The course also offers other Mule distinctives like island greens and raised baskets. It's way above my skill level, but if you want to get beat up and mauled I recommend that you give it a try.

[Koto]

Finally got the chance to play Rolling Pines today ahead of the tournament June 11th. Beautiful course. Kicked my ass but I shot 64 from the golds. Definitely hoping to shave a few strokes off but I had a great time.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...6/IMG_0114.jpg

[Riverdog]

Originally Posted by Koto

Finally got the chance to play Rolling Pines today ahead of the tournament June 11th. Beautiful course. Kicked my ass but I shot 64 from the golds. Definitely hoping to shave a few strokes off but I had a great time.

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachmen...6/IMG_0114.jpg

Good on ya! Have you played Ft Hamby? For my money and game a better course, longs and shorts. Nice pic btw.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Koto]

Originally Posted by Riverdog

Good on ya! Have you played Ft Hamby? For my money and game a better course, longs and shorts. Nice pic btw.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Haven't had a chance to but I will check it out next time I'm up that way.

[pmay5]

Originally Posted by Riverdog

Good on ya! Have you played Ft Hamby? For my money and game a better course, longs and shorts. Nice pic btw.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Any idea of what happened to Highland Hills? The latest conditions list it as overgrown and unplayable. Maybe RP was all the Parks Dept were willing to keep up, so they gave up on HH?

If North Wilkes still had those 3, all 3.5 rated or higher, that's a pretty good DG small town!

[wolfhaley]

Originally Posted by pmay5

Any idea of what happened to Highland Hills? The latest conditions list it as overgrown and unplayable. Maybe RP was all the Parks Dept were willing to keep up, so they gave up on HH?

If North Wilkes still had those 3, all 3.5 rated or higher, that's a pretty good DG small town!

I wanted to check it out last week when I was over there but it's been marked unplayable for awhile now. Kind of a shame, the pictures of it looked solid.