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Anna, IL

Anna City Park

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1.55(based on 1 reviews)
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Anna City Park reviews

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PastorofMuppets
Silver level trusted reviewer
Premium Member
Experience: 4.9 years 150 played 118 reviews
1.50 star(s)

Massive Park, Massive Disappointment

Reviewed: Played on:Nov 24, 2023 Played the course:once

Pros:

WHAT TO EXPECT: Massive park setting with obvious signs of tons of money and infrastructure invested in the park. Two sets of tees play to a single basket location (a much shorter Red layout for beginners and low AMs and a slightly longer and more challenging Blue layout for Recreational and Intermediate players). Mostly open course with few trees but tons of buildings, ball fields, playgrounds, and a small lake.

AMENITIES: Everywhere you look there are massive well kept buildings, playgrounds, grand stands, a race track, docks on the lake, everything and more you would expect from a well funded city park.

TEES/SIGNAGE/BASKETS: Tees are natural grass with a single painted board (2 x 4) indicating the front of the tee pad, Red for the short and Blue for the long. Signage is old and incorrect and basically useless, more on this later. Baskets are older but still in good shape White Patriots.

DESIGN: One of the worst 18 hole course designs I have ever experienced. Most holes are stapled in every available inch of free space with complete disregard for errant throws, inaccessable fenced in areas, playgrounds, ball fields, parking lots, etc. I struggle to find pros for the design but I will say that due to shoehorning 18 holes on this property there is an abundance of variety of distances and shot shapes required.

EXTRAS: Beyond the course play itself, this park is amazing. It has a little bit of everything for people who want to enjoy the course.

Cons:

Normally I would break these into sections, but this time, I'm just going to bullet point my frustrations as I experienced them in real time from my notes:
- Course sign is no where near a tee, any tee, and the course map is completely useless as EVERY hole has been renumbered. Forced to use U-Disc and smart layouts to find the first tee.
- Hole #1 ended up being about 400 yards away back the way we came in. Happened to see a tee sign that said Hole #15 but U-Disc indicated this was Hole #1.
- Wanted to play the long Blue layout but couldn't find the tee, looked on the walking paths for indication and eventually saw a red 2 x 4 in the ground near the Hole #15 tee sign thus discovering there were natural tees. Eventually found the "blue" tee shoved in between two buildings to the left. It was a common theme that the blue tees had no tee signs throughout.
- Get to the basket and see that it has a printed out hole number paper clipped on it, with the old hole number under it.
- Hole #2 throws downhill out onto a ridge with a fenced in power station to the left about 10 feet from the basket with no seeable way to get in there to get your disc so we played safe the right.
- Got lost looking for Hole #3, apparently we were supposed to know to walk all the way back up Hole #2 fairway to a tee located behind Hole #2 tee to throw towards a stack of old ball field equipment and discarded fencing behind the ball field with the basket about 10 feet from someone's back yard. Bonus points for them having a large dog, unleashed who doesn't like discs.
- Hole #4, you guessed it, you have to walk back up hole #3 fairway along the fence line to find the tee. This appears to be old hole #18 and the tee sign says you are throwing to a basket right next to Hole #1 tee (basket is there), but U-Disc says you are throwing toward a basket on the other side of the ball field fence (also basket is there). So we threw the U-Disc basket.
- Hole #5, well this is interesting. There is a fenced off construction area with a brand new playground between the tee and the basket. The basket is tucked in the triangle corner of two property line fences.
- Hole #6 blue tee is gone due to the new playground so we played the red that throws directly at a fenced in (locked and barbed wire topped) pool area. Once at this basket we were lost. We could see the next tee, but there were fences in every direction and no foreseeable way to get to it. We had to double back, walk down the road, cut across a different playground and scale the fence.
- Hole #7 Blue tee had a giant Gene Bloom Lift parked on it, Reds it is. The red tee has us play down a tunnel between the batting cages and the ball field fence.
- Hole #8 Blue tee once again unfindable. Reds again. Forced left to right towering 200 foot shot to get over the trees blocking you from the tee with the lake running down the entire length of the right side of the fairway and green. Fenced in property line behind basket and left. Lake is steep and deep right off the bank, don't lose a disc here.
- Hole #9 time to hike, roughly 300 yards around the perimeter of the lake to find the tee. Great, found a blue tee. Wait, where's the basket? Basket neither in the place the tee sign nor U-Disc says it should be. There is a baseball field there, no basket. After looking around a bit we find the basket has been moved to about 500 feet from the tee behind ball field dugout. So you have the option of mushing one full carry over the ballfield or playing about the outside of the fence with a landing zone between the field and the perimeter road about 15 feet wide the entire way. I went full send and somehow barely made it over the field.
- Hole #10 took about 10 minutes of walking to find even using U-Disc. Ended up being a couple hundred yards down the property between a couple pole barns near a cemetery. My playing partner had already given up and went back to the car. I switched to reds at this point to just finish the course. The back 9 was all shoehorned short Par 3's weaving between pole barns, throwing over small bushes (convienently there was a swarm of people decorating these bushes for Christmas and I skipped those holes and just walked them). Hole #18 finished about 300 yards from the parking lot (if I played it right) I had the choice of throwing directly over the parking lot to that basket we encountered on Hole #4 that might have been a practice basket? Or throwing to the small island green next to the grand stands which may also have been a practice basket? I was so confused.
- Final Thoughts: There was not one single hole on the course where you weren't either forced or in danger of throwing at a building, windows, playgrounds, other people's property, cars, lakes, ball fields, or basically something you would rather not hit. This course is already shoehorned in spaces not occupied by other park amenities, it desperately needs to be redesigned again. However, I'm not sure how you could improve it.

Other Thoughts:

That other app had this listed as a 3.3 rated course. I'm not sure how it ever got enough votes above 3 to help that average. The horrid course design, the lack of tee pads, the useless signage, and the constant risk of losing a disc or hitting someone or something make this course unplayable to me. Really odd course considering just how well funded and done the rest of the park is. I would not recommend this course to anyone beyond the most hardcore baggers.
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