A half hour northeast of New Orleans, the Fritchie Park course offers some fun throws amid a wooded layout with bayou glimpses, but its navigational frustrations and inconsistent facilities limit the overall appeal.

The course starts with much promise, as there's a practice basket near the parking lot and the Hole #1 teepads just beyond. The teepads are marked with red (short) and blue (long) corners to indicate the two options. The difference between the two teepad offerings is usually just straight-ahead distance without much change to the angles.

Most of the course fits into the short but tight descriptor from the red teepads and is a good introduction to wooded disc golf for beginners; 11 of the 18 holes are less than 200 feet in length. Players who can consistently throw putters dead straight will thrive here, but a little deviation from the fairway will call one's scramble game into play.

In the woods, finding the next hole was fairly straight-forward by following the paths between holes.

Locating the "right" layout was challenging, and the other app was not much assistance with navigation either. At least several of the holes have multiple pin locations and without proper signage or correct indications from the app, it was difficult to determine basket location. On Hole #2, I threw to a spot that set me up to cross the road to a long, par-4 pin location; however, after searching for a couple minutes, I concluded that the long basket wasn't present and I retraced my steps to re-tee. During my round, I located 18 holes, so if there is/was 21 holes, I left the park unaware. Also, there are a few transitions where spotting the next hole wasn't immediately apparent.

The awesome concrete teepads at the start of the course soon turned to crushed gravel after Hole #6, I believe. And without proper marking on some of the tee areas, it became a bit of a guessing game of where the teepad should be. I couldn't find the long teepad for Hole #6, and I ended up playing a mix of short and long teepads during my round. Several of the latter holes, including the last two holes, I believe, had concrete teepads again. Apparently, the layout was re-numbered recently – the opening hole use to be Hole #17. Most of the holes that are more open feature concrete teepads, while the heavily wooded holes rely on crushed gravel.

The crushed gravel tee areas weren't great. Fortunately, many of the holes are on the shorter side and don't require a powerful run-up, but the tee areas weren't level and with the gravel spread about, one could be quite liberal about where the tee area starts and ends.

The course appears to retain water to a significant degree. When I played in early December, it had rained a couple days prior. However, the area surrounding the baskets for Holes #3 and #5 was surrounded by ankle-deep standing water, making disc retrieval quite difficult. A local player said he sometimes just puts down a par for Hole #3 and skips it. There were a few other holes where there were some muddy or slightly swampy areas too. With the course being nearly completely flat, drainage is likely an issue after rain.

Hole #9 finishes near the farthest point from Hole #1, so there's no convenient returning to the parking lot until the end of the round.

On the right side of the long Hole #13 (over 500 feet) is a bayou with a sign indicating that snakes and alligators are in the area. If your disc ends up right of the walking path that borders the bayou, you probably want to kiss it goodbye. I didn't spot any wild critters on my visit, though I did spot a large turtle on a log and a heron in the distance. But not only is this hole a threat to wayward discs, it's a dangerous hole that continually turns to the left and prompts unsighted throws near the walking path in which pedestrians are not easily spotted.

Several of the tight wooded holes have trees within 15 feet of the basket, so don't expect a clean circle on those holes.

The distances and hole numbers have not been updated on DGCR; however, without proper signage, the distances would be guesswork, anyway. A UDisc user expressed frustration that "the baskets [are] being moved to different spots all the time," which adds to the navigational challenge for first-time visitors.

There's a few-minute walk from Hole #17 to Hole #18, but at least the course ends near the parking lot.

Despite the list of cons, Fritchie Park can be a fun play and the layout seems to receive a lot of attention and love from the locals. However, the course would greatly benefit from navigational cues, accurate signage, concrete teepads for every hole, better drainage and a bit of maintenance work. Fritchie Park has some of the essentials for a higher-rated course but right now, the negatives limit its overall appeal.

Fritchie Park is a shorter 18 holer in Slidell, but don't let the lack of length fool you into thinking this will be an easy birdie-watching outing. Once you get into the woods, these fairways are T-I-G-H-T TIGHT. And the only hole that's straight is about 5ft wide.

The biggest strength of this course is the shot variety. There are a LOT of Left-to Right fairways, some at much sharper angle than others, but it's kind of a break from the RHBH friendly courses everywhere else .

Still being fairly new, the fairways are pretty clear. They are starting to grow in though since it's spring, so hopefully there will be enough traffic, or maybe a work day at some point to clear it out again.

Baskets are Dynamic Disc Patriots, and they were great. I thought they were pretty solid.

The main con is due to the rawness, of the course, and that the people who carved out these fairways basically had only hand tools to work with. They did a great job for just a handful of guys pulling a course out of these woods, but until a few more of those small trees come out, and the brush pushed farther back, it's going to be pretty difficult to get to the pin.

Because of this, any twos mainly feel lucky (and even some threes), and bogies are going to be easy to come by. The angles you need to hit are so sharp, or so precise, you've got to get a little tricky, and it feels kind of like the whole course is scramble golf.

Tee pads are gravel for the most part, kind of uneven. The tee markers are pvc pipe or brick at ground level, so they are very hard to find from a distance. There's paint on trees to help you navigate some of the holes, but once you get into the woods you don't need them which is nice because the numbers are wrong now after the expansion.

The course starts and finishes with some huge safety concerns. There is a picnic table in front of the first tee, several buildings come into play, you actually do throw over the road at one point (plus a lot of throwing near it. There's a dog park, baseball fields, maintenance yard, and walking path that are all either part of an actual hole, or close enough to be in danger. In all honesty, it seems like there was a lot of "how can we fit a hole here" and not a lot of actual designing.

I am so proud of the people who put in so much work to get this course done. I know the community is so happy to have a course nearby, because if you lived in Slidell it was a drive to any course near you. It's been a hit with the local New Orleans community and another option on the north shore of Lake Pontchartrain