This was course 299 on the way to that next DGReview medallion of 500 courses played. My son and I played on a Tuesday afternoon after I had worked a 10 hour day. Despite the length of the course, and the fact that I by far prefer city park type courses, we had a good time playing this course.
(Side note: Like the previous reviewer, I am a 60+ disc player)

The design was like a links type course with minimal trees and high rough bordering the fairways. Water was a factor, though the fairways offered an alternative for the faint of heart. (Ok, I still lost my favorite Wraith in the water on hole 12).

The Yellow Disc Catcher baskets were easily spotted, even on the lengthy fairways. The fairways were well maintained and allowed for a significantly easier round if your tee shots found them as opposed to the rough.

I did like the paths that were cut through the rough leading one to the next tee area. Lawn maintenance was excellently done on the paths and fairways.

i am generally not a fan of length and somehow the overall length did not seem burdensome. There were enough shorter holes spliced in that it made for a nice variety of holes.

While no hole sticks out in my mind as a signature hole (maybe the water carry at the basket end of 7 has merit), there was no monotony to the numerous lengthy holes.

What happened?? I played this course on 6/28/22. It still looks like the reviews from late 2020 accurately describe the course.

No signage at all, missing tee markers on three holes. Still throwing from the natural terrain.

Looks like the course got started then the fine tuning process just stopped.

Again I ask "What happened?

No one else was out there playing on what was a beautiful St Louis late afternoon/ early evening.

As stated earlier, I found the course, despite its length, to be quite enjoyable. The potential for something special is definitely there, just needs to take the next step.

As one reviewer stated, having multiple tee pads allowing for lesser armed throwers like me would make the course appealing to a greater audience.
And it would be very doable to this course as currently constructed.

The course as is, currently is worth the 2.5 rating. Adding signs, tee pads, etc has the potential to get it up to a four. Even as is, it was worth the trip.

Good baskets.

The layout does not flow with long walks from basket to next tee on many of the holes.
As a plus 60 player the distances are just insane. There really needs to be much shorter tees if the average player is to get any enjoyment out of playing here. As you probably guessed by now I did not have fun today. I know it's not done yet but a nearly quarter mile walk to get to the first tee only to play to a green near where you park. That sounds like hole 18 to me but no, 18 finishes another 100 yards past ones tee so it's even a longer walk in. Like I said, not fun. If it's true that this is to help attract Worlds here I can tell you that I've played in worlds and there wasn't any course designed like this one.

Hopefully a rework of the layout can be done and added amature tees will make it much more playable for the vast majority.

Sunset Lakes is the newest addition to the St. Louis disc golf scene, and provides something different than we have seen from other courses in the area. The St. Louis Disc Golf Club sees this course as an addition that can help cement St. Louis disc golf in the Midwest, and also help attract larger tournaments to the area, including Worlds. The potential is there, and overtime we will see if this course lives up to the hype.

This course is now the longest course in the St. Louis area. At 10,343 feet, it is even longer than the longest layout of the old Creve Couer Lake Course, and is around a thousand feet longer than the longest potential layouts at Sioux Passage or New Melle Lakes. Players who love longer bombs for holes will be at home here, as hole 18 is over a thousand feet, and 5 other holes range from 700' to 1000'. You will absolutely get your daily steps in if you play this course, so follow rule #18 and limber up before starting your round.

The yellow DISCatcher baskets are easy to spot, with most baskets being easy to spot from the teepad, even when it's 900-1000' away. A lot of the baskets have flags on them, and more flags were being added during my round. Even some of the holes with more obstacles on them like 6 and 13 were not hard to spot. The baskets vary in terms of how deep they are, but they all seem to catch and hole discs well.

While the water hazards are another story, there are currently not many places to lose a disc as long as you stay on land. There's not a whole lot of brush on this course, so as long as you can keep dry, you shouldn't have any disc hunts like with some other courses in the area.

The current setup with small wooden posts notating teepad locations make the tees hard to spot, the flow of the course is nice. There aren't any walks that are unreasonable, and all of the holes have their own fairways that make it hard to throw over one another unless you have a very errant throw. Without a clear teesign sticking out at each tee, it can be hard to find the next tee on your own. The map included on this site is from the St. Louis disc golf club and is very accurate. If you ave the UDisc app, it will lead you to every tee without a problem.

The flat terrain makes this course exceptionally cart friendly.

Currently, the course is still being fully developed, and as a result is effectively incomplete. For instance, there are no teesigns or teepads. I am not sure what kind of teepads will be going in, but currently every teepad is natural. Given the amount of precipitation St Louis gets annually, this means that the teepads will often be muddy and can lead to slips.

Many of the water hazards include large dropoffs into the water. If you don't have a device to get discs out of the water, you're not going to get your disc back without getting wet. I threw a disc into the hazard on 18 right next to the edge of the water, but the murky water that's on this course made it impossible to tell exactly where it was.

Currently, anyone coming to play this course has to park across the street, and hole 1 is '852 feet and plays towards the street, meaning it's about a 1000' foot walk to start your round. If you don't want to add that distance to your day, hole 2 is actually close to the street, so you could start at hole 2, play through 18, and end on hole 1 pretty easily.

Being a flat and low lying course, standing water will be a recurring theme at this course. When I played my round, St. Louis had received a few different days of rain over the previous 7-10 days, which resulted in some muddy areas, especially on holes 1 and 15. While none of the standing water was much of a factor for playing, I wonder how much standing water this course will have each Spring during especially rainy periods.

As can be seen by the course map, a lot of the course design and OB lines will depend on grass being mowed so OB is higher. Currently, the majority of the land has short grass or brush, which leads to more open holes. Without these additional and defined OB lines, a lot of the holes play more open than they should, which makes for more redundancy and less challenge on the course. Many of the holes on course are designed to have fairways that are tighter than the cart paths on site. The most blatant example is hole 4, which is meant to be an island hole but currently does not have the island boundaries defined. Defined OB lines might not solve all of the issues with redundant shots, but it would at least help.

I think it is important to make a note of a couple of things with this review.

1. This course is still under construction.
2 I'm an intermediate player that drives a max distance of around 350'.

This course is obviously a work in progress, and will be improved in the coming year. There are no teesigns, but they will surely be added in the near future. There are no teepads, but they will also be added in the new future. The walk to hole 1 is long, but the plan is for the city to put a parking lot in along hole 1's fairway. I assume based on the course map that a practice basket will be added by hole 1, along with a bulletin board. This course will improve overtime, and my rating both shows where I think it is at now, but will also be updated as the course updates.

As for difficulty level, this course is meant to be a longer, more challenging course that can be used for larger, higher profile events. That means that players of different levels are going to have very different levels of difficulty with this course. I would not recommend this course to beginning players; there are an abundance of other courses in the area I would recommend starting with if you are new, including Watson Trail and Unger which are both just a couple miles from this course. Intermediate players like myself will find some more success with this course but will be challenged by the sheer length of these holes. The birdie opportunities on many of these holes in the 300'-500' range that more advanced players will have will not be as accessible to players that don't have the are to get that far in one drive. With all of that being said, the design of the course only includes 1 teepad per hole. I wonder what a second shorter tee on each hole would look like, and if that shorter layout would be able to have enough shot variety to be fun.

While the standing water that this course is prone to is a concern, I think the larger concern is that this course is in the floodplain of the Meramec River, a river that is very prone to flooding in the area the course is in. I have not seen this plot of land during floods yet, but there's a possibility that this course may be unplayable for at least part of each year.

The land that this course sits on was given to the city of Sunset Hills two years ago, and the amount of land the city allowed to have devoted to this disc golf course is substantial to say the least. The course has a lot of potential to be a strong addition to the area that checks boxes that other local courses do not. If the grass allows for more defined OB next year, this course will start to play more as intended, which I think will make it better than it currently is. This land this course is on has a abandoned feel to it, similarly to Carrollton Park up in Bridgeton, for obvious reasons, but this could be improved on overtime with attention by either the local disc golf club or the city.

This is one of a couple projects the local club is working on, and should add to the great variety the St. Louis Disc Golf scene has been adding lately. This area has great wooded courses in Quail Ridge and The Bunker, park courses in JB, Sioux and Willmore, History with White Birch, and technical challenges in Endicott. Not to mention the other courses around here I haven't gotten to yet. This course adds to that variety, and hopefully will settle in to being a strong addition to the area that leads to more prominent competitions and more visits from out of town players. Time will tell.

I'll be sure to update this review as the course is worked on overtime.

The Disc Catcher baskets are yellow and easy to spot from 700-1050 feet away. The course is on an ex-ball golf property and is mostly flat, except for the mounds created by bulldozers when originally built. There are not many areas of high grass to hide discs. Most holes have small wooden tee markers with the hole number on them and pink paint sprayed on the grass or old cart paths to delineate the tee boxes. If you can drive 450 feet or more, you might enjoy Sunset . It is cart friendly. 2 pins per hole. Grass pads.

Hole 1 tee is about 1000 feet east of the parking lot, then throw back to west towards the parking lot! Hole 2 should be numbered #1 ( across the road from parking lot ) and all holes numbered one less and hole 1 should be 18 for sensible flow. So start on hole 2. As this is on a ball golf course, there was tons of acreage,, so this was stretched out, and many holes in the 600-800 foot range, with only 2 or 3 around 300ft. Not a lot of variety for shaping shots; just chuck your arm out its socket 2 or 3 times per hole and avoid the water hazards on half the holes, and the standing water in low spots. No signs yet, just tee markers; I needed U Disc to navigate. No benches or trash cans. Beginners and Rec players will be frustrated and discouraged.

The baskets are from the Creve Coeur course, which is long and flat. Sunset is longer, with more lakes and less trees. I live 15 miles from Creve Coeur ( I call it Creve Bore ) and played it maybe 3 times in 23 years; it just has no fun factor, and this course is more of that. My friend (Grumpy) Erik is rated around 950 and he thought it sucked too. Everyone has different ideas on what makes a fun course though, so come out and play Sunset first, then click on whether this review is helpful or not.