If you're able to play when there aren't many joggers and walkers -- and I don't know when that would be -- Dorton Park offers 9 mostly short (some exceptionally short) holes for some basic putt and approach practice.

+ Very pretty park
+ Good baskets
+ Lots of ace runs

This is a very short beginner course, so it's not going to get a high rating from me, but the reason it only gets a 0.5, below many courses that are much rougher, older, or beat-in, is SAFETY.

- Safety is a major concern here. The course follows a walking trail through a very popular park. 95% of the people in that section of the park are walking on the trails, not throwing discs. You literally have to wait at the tee until all the walkers have cleared out in the vicinity before you throw. And some of the holes are blind shots, so you have to walk around, check for walkers, then scoot back to the tee to throw before other walkers come by. This course is clearly designed for beginners, and that's great, but I'd be afraid to bring a beginner here during peak hours for fear of an errant shot hitting a walker. There are other more minor reasons to dock points from Dorton, but safety is far and away the biggest problem here. Be careful and yield to walkers!

- One hole is literally an 84-foot, wide open, par...3?

- There are about 3-4 decently long holes, but I was so worried about hitting other park goers on the blind shots, that I just threw putters into open areas and took some pars that probably should've been easy birdies.

It's right off 85 and easy to get to, but don't make a trip just to play it.

There are concrete pads and baskets.

It is a good place to work on your ace totals, particularly on hole 4, which is listed at 113 feet and is probably not even that.

If you ace #4 (I did!), you start to wonder how short a hole has to be for you to not even count it in your ace totals. I paced the hole off, and it was 28 paces, so 113 feet probably isn't right. I was putting from the tee.

Design is not good. The course plays around and over a walking path that gets a lot of use. Hole 9 has a narrow alley with a dogleg, a shot that even a skilled player will have trouble with. Another hole (7?) plays along a murky, wide creek, where a beginner LHBH or RHFH shot could easily end up.

Flow is a little weird in some spots. Most of the shots are pretty open and uninteresting.

I played here because I had an hour of daylight left on the way back from Bradford. If you are introducing someone to the game, this works fine, but otherwise there just isn't much here.

What I personally like and how this course stacks up:
1) Holes with good risk/reward -- C
2) Holes that have rewarding birdie opportunities -- D
3) More wooded than open - lots of variety of shots required caused by hole shape and topography -- C-
4) Natural beauty (Appalachian beauty preferred) and seclusion -- C
5) Multi-shot holes with defined landing zones, good risk/reward and multiple options to play them -- NA

I ranked this course subjectively based on my own personal enjoyment factor...more accurately my "personal addiction factor". Since I have played a decent number of courses (115 18-hole, 50 9-hole as of early 2009), my hope is that players/explorers who have similar tastes will find my ratings list helpful as they chose courses to play and explore.

Over time, I expect to fill some of my reviews in with more descriptive verbiage...if what I say adds anything to what has already been written. For now, my list is more important to me than the verbiage of my reviews.

I fully expect others with different tastes/philosophies to disagree with me. See my profile for my rating philosophy.