Big Bend is an 18-hole DGC that plays in a combination county park/campground of the same name, about an hour's drive north of Grand Rapids, MI.

This course has a tightly wooded feel throughout. There is a decent mix of left turning, right turning, and straight fairways cut out of the forest. In a couple of places the course gets close to the Hardy Dam Pond (really more of a lake) and the water is visible through the trees, although it never comes into play. The hole distances are substantial, with the average being around 320'. This average is stretched out by two par 4's that measure around 600' each. There isn't a ton of elevation change, but I judged it as enough to affect play on a few holes. Overall, this course will definitely challenge most players as it will take a combination of distance and pinpoint accuracy (and maybe some luck too - see below) to score well. If your aim is off, you could easily average a bogey per hole or worse (may or may not be saying this from personal experience).

The baskets are yellow banded DISCatchers in good condition. The teepads are large slabs of concrete in good condition. There are a few scattered picnic tables located near teepads.

Navigation is good, with simple but effective signage to direct you where needed. The front nine and back nine each loop back to the parking lot.

I felt that some of the holes here were poorly designed. A few seemed too tight, or had unrealistic lines. The worst may be hole 16, which plays 600' straight ahead through a narrow tunnel of those tall and neatly arranged rows of pine trees - and thick, nasty rough on both sides. I feel like even touring pros would need some luck to achieve par (4) on this one. Nothing has really been cleared out since the first two reviews below were written in 2011 and 2012.

Hole 3 plays across the two-track you drive in on, and there is a cabin/campsite basically on hole 7's fairway.

The tee signs appear only at the long tees, and each one only shows the hole number on a small metal plate mounted to a post. On many holes the basket is not visible from the tee and I found myself looking at the map uploaded here to see which way the hole turned. This course theoretically also has short "tees". In reality, these are just beat-up and half-buried wooden kick plates with no additional signage at them. As far as I could tell, the kick plates were almost always just located on the fairway for the long tee - so they would hardly count as a "different layout". I think it would be tricky to even find all of them if you wanted to play the short "layout."

There is a $7 fee for a day pass to enter the park, payable at an office station at the park entrance. If the office is open, you can pay via credit card inside. I don't normally mind pay-to-play at all, but in this case it was clear that my $7 was not going towards disc golf course maintenance. On most fairways, it looked like the grass had not yet seen a mower in 2022 (it was mid-June when I played). There was a downed tree on one fairway which I had to walk about 20 feet into the rough to get around. A couple of the tee signs were missing. There were zero trash cans on the course, but plenty of trash (both on fairways, and in the woods nearby). Holes 13 and 16 are shown with two fairways on the course map, but on both of these it was pretty clear that only one of the fairways was even seeing the minimal maintenance of the rest of the course. The rough often had thorns and brambles in it.

No practice basket or porta potty. No kiosk either, although you can get a scorecard at the office where you pay if you go inside (format has changed since the version uploaded here, but the information on it is still the same as of June 2022).

The elderly woman working the office where I paid my $7 admitted to not knowing anything about disc golf herself, but mentioned that previous disc golfers told her this course is unique and fun, and could be ready for tournament play with a few more upgrades. After playing the course myself, I had to wonder if those disc golfers were really just trying to encourage better maintenance of the place. And I have to disagree about the "unique" part as well. To me, this course felt similar to many other technical wooded options in the area - with the key difference that most of the other options are free to play. For that reason, I doubt I will be returning here unless I hear about significant changes and improvements.

I think this course is comparable to a couple of other tight technical ones that I have given a 2.5 rating to, but having to pay for a lack of maintenance dragged my rating down to 2.0. I just expected a little more for my $7. DG'ers looking for one of those free-to-play yet better technical wooded options should head to Branstrom Park in Fremont, Northend Riverside Park in Big Rapids, or Far Hill in Sparta. Or - Newaygo State Park just across the lake is pay-to-play (sort of - you need the state park Recreation Passport), but offers better maintenance and a course that is much easier but otherwise is honestly pretty similar to this, even down to the views of the lake through the trees.