This course will challenge higher skill level players, and we could use more courses like this in the Triangle. The Course Level =: Blue (most suited for Advanced players rated 950). Hole 8 is a wickedly hard par 4 that's one of the toughest in all of North Carolina.
There's a solid design with a good mix of fairway shapes (3 Straight/ 2 Left/ 4 Right). It has very good length variety too (1 of 200/ 3 of 201-299/ 3 of 301-399/ 1 of 415/ 1 of 525). The terrain is mostly wooded, with some elevation changes but 5 flat holes.
The Neuse river behind basket 6 and tee 7 adds quite a bit to the beauty of the course.

-Navigation is now horrendous. If it's your first time don't even attempt it without a guide! You'd have a incredibly hard time finding many of the tees. The tees are natural and only marked by bricks flush to the ground that easily get covered over with dirt. Tee 3 has always been tough to find and tees 6 and 9 were covered over. The old signs were minimal but I don't remember even seeing any there this time. At it's best finding tee 5 was always hard because it was near a confusing intersection with 8 and 9, and now it's even harder.
-Baskets: Quite a few have peeling paint, dirt, and black mold on the chastity belt from lack of use. Number 1 is mangled and has rusted chains.
-The basket on hole 6, near the Neuse River, has been stolen and not been replaced for several years. (It would sure seem easy to load it onto an ATV and escape down the trail right next to it.)
-Even in its prime they had a hard time keeping the fairways mowed in the summer. I never played there in the summer because the grass in some fairways was so long that you needed a spotter to find your disc even if it was in the fairway!
-Unsightly manmade structures next to some fairways make it lose aesthetic appeal. Hole 1 has a rusty barbed wire topped fence guarding the club pool down the whole right side of the fairway. Holes 4 & 9 have an old dilapidated tennis court on the side of their fairways. It's really ugly.
-Small safety issues-- the drive of hole 6 crosses fairway 8. It could be an issue if there were ever a lot of people out there.

Sadly, the course seems like an abandoned child left on Raleigh's doorstep. It's being neglected and may be dying. I always thought this course had lots of potential, but it just never caught on, partly because it's only 9 holes. When I played there it seemed like no one had even been there for several months because many tees were covered with fallen leaves. Once upon a time, there was a mailbox at hole 1 that had course maps and score cards, but that's long gone. Now the course is like a ghost town, and you half expect to see a tumbleweed blowing by.

It sure doesn't help that the ATV riders seem to be really active out by the river and are leaving tons of tracks on the fairways.

Although the course is in decline, like an abandoned house it still has a strong design foundation and would be worth renovating. Green Pines has always held promise of being a good course. I can almost hear it weakly crying out "I'm not dead yet." Maybe an Extreme Makeover: DG Course Edition team will come in and rescue it. Until then, I hate to say it, but if it's your first time I wouldn't venture out there without a guide because it would just be too hard to find your way around. That's sad.

You can read more of my reviews at the Yahoo group "DG Course Reviews", http://sports.groups.yahoo.co...urseReviews/. Look in the Files section there for my Overall Rating notes and Hole-by-hole ratings too.