-A variety of open, wooded, over the water, tunnel, gap, woods to open, open to wooded, and roller holes. There are down slope, up slope, and side slope holes.

-No.1 long tee hole a narrow tunnel shot, ranks as my most difficult and frightening hole for disc lost, for No. 1 holes on the courses I have played. Knocking out Dorey Park from a month ago.

-Solid three- hole stretch 13-15.

-The course from the short tees is a good teaching course for beginners and recreational players. From the long tees difficult for intermediate and advanced.

-From the tee I threw a variety of putters, fairway drivers, and drivers. Went thru about half of a 24- disc bag including approaches.

-Tee signs have map with next tee, hole number, distance, and par.

-Short tees are concrete in good shape. Some long tee pads were compact dirt and decent shape.

-Good navigation to the next concrete short tee.

-There are C1 and C2 whiskers. Did not notice until Hole 5 and saw them the rest of the way, and only saw a few C2 on the back 9.

-The course is separated by an elementary school from the rest of the park and has its own parking.

-Course map at the entrance gate.

-Looked like maybe just once this year the course had been mowed. There was waste high grass on the lower slopes of the course, and some knee-high grass elsewhere in some places. This made the roller greens ineffective.

-Missing tee sign on one-hole, other tee signs had nasty clothing draped over them. A few tee signs had foliage growing over and around them.

-Some long tee pads not possible to find due to no markings, or not playable due to high grass or thick foliage grown over them. No. 10 long pad is gone due to road construction. No. 2 long tee sits in the middle of No. 1 long fairway, but worth it.

-Some fairways cross over and run close together and are blind tee throws. I wonder how often players are hit by a disc.

-No. 12 basket bent at the barrel, and No. 14 leaning over.

-High lost disc potential.

-After a sustained rain, course is likely to be swampy.

-Broken glass and trash on the course.

-A few dog walkers crossing fairways.

-For those passing thru the Richmond area or bagging. The course is 9 miles from I-295, and 6 miles from I-95 with heavy traffic, frequent stop lights, and currently construction, this part of the drive was agonizing. What was supposed to of been an 8am arrival, turned into an 820am from I-295. That much extra time.

IMO with no or little course maintenance, some lost and unplayable long tee pads resulting in losing out on some long holes, and trash on the course. This course is on the back slide, and per my homework prior to playing has been for quite some time. Kudos to member Gottafixit for trying to rally the troops to cleanup the course on a wall post, but it does not look like there was a response?

However, there are those who love the layout including a local Pro I happened to play with in Virginia Beach a few days after playing the course. The course is difficult from the long tees and he had me thinking that perhaps I'll keep my eye on the course, and if there's a time when its cleaned up, I'll return for a rewrite on my review and a possible solid jump on my rating. Per my homework on the course, I did play 1 and 2 from the long tees for 2 extra holes and I already knew about the mess the course was in.

With the variety of the course layout, variety of disc played from my bag, A solid fun factor in the wooded portion of course my overall rating is anchored on a 4.5. It took 70 minutes to play the round, including searching for long tee pad's.

Notable Holes:
No. 5 Par 3 short tee at 245 feet is an up-hill tee throw between a wooded gap. The gap is about 50 feet out and 20 feet wide, the crest of the hill is about 75 feet out and the disc will disappear down slope, with also a right to left down slope across fairway. On the left is a tree line, and the basket is in the right tree line on top of the slope. Basket it about 15 feet in the tree line and protected in the front. If you can make the distance, best putting is side/back door. I found my straight drive in the left wood line.

No. 6 Par 3 short tee at 195 feet is a straight tunnel shot 15 feet wide and need 185 feet for a birdie look. Basket is protected by bushy tree. Would be a difficult ace run.

No. 13 Par 3 short tee at 370 feet is a lazy left at 200 feet, then a lazy right to a roller basket. From tee is a down slope at the 200- foot mark, where there is a waste area of debris. Then fairway drops steeper to the basket, and from the tee disc will disappear. From left to right is a down slope across fairway to basket. Clump of trees right of fairway at 220 feet. It's a scenic hole, but the high grass takes away the roller at the basket, there's also a tree line just 20 feet past the basket.

No. 14 Par 3 short tee at 290 feet is on the lower portion of the course. Straight down, with a slight right to left, fairway slopes down left to right. Heavy woods both sides about 25 feet down. Nasty brush on the right side. At the 240- foot mark sharp left turn to an elevated basket on a hill about 12 feet high, roller up hill and to the right. Levels out past basket. Again, the high grass makes the roller ineffective. Need to make the 240-foot mark or you will be blocked out on the left tree line.

No. 15 Par 3 short tee at 260 feet looks a little like 14 from the tee, but more of a lazy right to left and narrower at 20 feet. From the tee you are aiming to the nasty tree line on the right, and no straight shot to the basket. A slight slope across fairway left to right. Basket is at fairway height, and just 5 feet from the nasty stuff on the right. If grass was cut, could roll into brush.

Signature Hole:

No. 2. Long tee at 297 feet across a deep pond needing at least 247 feet to make it across into a 30- foot gap. A little elevation from tee, you're throwing from a gap, and dirt tee is solid footing. Basket sits in the open about 50 feet past pond and gap. Heavy tree line on both sides of gap. Very Scenic! If you cannot make distance, there is some shorter poke and hopes to the short No. 2 fairway.

Trouble Hole:

No 1. Par 3 long tee at 265 feet into a tunnel gap with heavy trees and canopy all the way down. Your birdie look is at 255 feet. The gap is no more than 20 feet wide all the way down. On your left is the heavy tree line with a roller to the lower short No. 1 fairway. On the right with the heavy tree line is the deep pond and only a few feet below the fairway. Nip a tree and your disc can go either way, and into the pond, you will never see it again. With the extreme lost disc potential, and no bail out. My first thought was "what a frightening" tee shot. I was not feeling charitable, so I threw easy putter all the way down.

Decent variety of wide open and wooded shots, sometimes depending on the tee pad taken.
Will encourage you to play both back and forward hand drives.
Good for practice.

Long tee boxes aren't maintained, and some don't seem to exist.
Many holes play in what can only be described as march land.
Little confusing finding tee boxes the first few times you play.

Goyne Park is about 3-4 minutes from my house, but I will drive 20+ minutes to go to other local courses 90% of the time I play. I don't know if this is a new thing because I don't see it mentioned in other reviews, but this course suffers from a severe drainage issue. Even when it hasn't rained in 5+ days, there are many places on the course that you will be in 3"+ of mud. The putting area around 10, the tee box at 11, good portions of 14 & 16, and all 15 are all just standing water.

It has about 5 good open shots.

Beware of Snakes and Dont take your nice discs.

Even though I'm a beginner I never had to worry before about losing discs, let alone 2 in one day.The first casualty came at hole 2 that is lined with a pond to the right. The second came on hole 11 that has thick forest on the right. My disc didnt go far, but the overwhelming briars and the spotting of two copperhead snakes left me defeated after 20 minutes of searching.
The course overlaps itself quite a bit and isnt well maintained. Most of the tees are either overgrown or the markers have been devoured by a riding lawn mower.

Two tee locations (blue longer than yellow, signs at blue). Online map and (critical) next tee signs at course make it easy for a first-time visitor to navigate. Practice basket.

Nearly all tee "pits"/locations in complete disrepair, small, ground-level markers smashed. Many places where slightly-errant throws could come near other tee locations.

For this review, I played the course from the shorter (yellow) tees.

Take a rectangular-shaped meadow, with a slight right-to-left slope, add a smattering of clusters and lines of trees, and you have the topography of this course. It plays in a counter-clockwise direction, occasionally doubling back on itself, or zig-zagging towards the center.

The first five holes are 200' +/- right turning shots, followed by two left turning shots of similar length, all with some trees involved. You then have two ~350' open shots. The back nine mostly consists of left-turning shots, with slightly more length and more challenging tree locations.

Favourite holes(s): #13, a long, slightly left-turning hole with a treeline about halfway across then to a right-side basket, followed by #14, a 300' drive down a narrowing fairway with the basket hard left.

Goyne exceeded my expectations and was played during a daylong tour of all the Richmond courses. The course has decent shot variety, makes good use of the available land, and from what I've heard from locals, is slowly and steadily improving -- which is great. If it makes full use of it's potential, I think it could eventually be a 3.0-rated course. But for now, the problems outweigh the benefits of playing here.

The biggest cons are the signage and markings for the tees. Even with the map, my brother and I failed to find all of the tees. Some of them don't have any markings at all (at least, as of this review), and some of the ones that have flags in the ground don't have any other information.

Quick advice related to the map: print the map in color -- if you print it in black and white, you can't read or see anything on it -- not even the hole numbers -- so it becomes virtually useless. If we'd had a color map, it would have helped, but a course should be navigable without a color map.

Some of the tees are boxed in and were just uneven, rutted dirt. If these boxes become concrete, it will be better, but not great, since they will be elevated -- boxes should ideally be level with the ground. Simply placing flags is preferable to boxing in a small square of ground and creating trip hazards for a teepad.

Most holes are fairly open, with a lack of variety in teeshots. Some of the long tees are much harder, but do so at the expense of a line. I'm a pro-level player, and have been playing for 11 years and have most shots in my bag, but there were blue teepads out there where I saw no reasonable way to reach the basket. The blues just make some holes a huck and pray and take the three... which is silly. Skill should always up your chances, and there are places here where the blues add difficulty and mitigate skill, which is just frustrating and poor course design.

The course wasn't horribly overgrown, but it could definitely use some work. Tall weeds throughout the course fairways made it uncomfortable and slowed down walking. This also made roller shots and skips pretty much impossible, which is a shame because the ground otherwise was relatively free of debris and would make a great place for roller shots across many of the open fairways.

Overall, the place had a desolate, deserted feel to it. We saw one other car with a pair of disc golfers wrapping up as we were starting our round midday on Saturday. After that, we saw no other people. Any growing course should have at least a few players on a beautiful Saturday. The lack of player interest suggests to me that this is definitely a B-list course by local standards. Lots of people at some of the other parks, but virtually no one at this one.

I guess the upside to the emptiness is that there are no collisions that way. There were several places on the course where you would be teeing off into a fairway you'd just walked up, or where baskets were too close to tees or multiple holes shared fairways... this would be a danger if the course were ever busy.

My rating of 2.0 may seem overly harsh, but I don't think so. This course is "2.0 - Reasonable" and that defines it perfectly. It is a reasonable place to play if you are nearby, but on one will go out of their way to play here until some of the issues are addressed. Good signage and tees, and frequent mowing would make this course a 3.0. And I think that's where it would peak. There are too many problems with this many holes on this little land for it to achieve much more than that. I'm not knocking the course designeres -- they're doing a great job of building a fun practice course out of what they have, but it's not there yet.

The course has a couple of cool holes -- #14, as mentioned by another reviewer, is a great shot -- fantastic tight hyzer alley blind up a hill to a fast green. Definitely one of the coolest shots on the course. Hole #2 across the water has some potential as well, but the long tee isn't marked, so it's hard to know what the actual shot over the pond is supposed to be.

This is worth checking out if you are in the area -- it's fun. But print a color map, bring plenty of bug spray (they are out in force), and don't come in with high expectations. Bring your teebird and you're putter and you'll be prepared for every hole this course has to offer.