– Two pads and two baskets on every hole
– Many technical shots, but not too technical. I like when I can let the disc fly, and this course demands precision without being frustrating
– A good variety of shots
– There is an amazing store right across the street, Glide Disc Golf
– Generally lots of parking, and a lot of shade for when it gets warm
– The whole property is very well manicured and taken care of. Great tee pads, mowed/woodchipped fairways, good signage, a cool signature feature wall on hole 5
– Garbage cans at every tee pad. There are large recycling and garbage bins right at the start of the course as well.

– Like others have noted, can get very very busy during peak times in the summer
– The first part of the course is shared with a park, and sometimes there will be other people within range of some shots. Luckily not on most of the course, but still something to point out.
– Not as much a con for everyone, but something to note is this isn't an open bomber course. There are 3 holes over 400' from the longs, and most of the course sits in the 275-350 range.

Hiestand is a great local course to have in Madison. It's my home course and I'm thrilled to have it so close by after moving here last year. There is a pretty sizable league that happens on Sundays with a good group of people which I haven't been to yet but it looks like fun. A few more random things:

– This is a seasonal course, so it's closed for the winter. When it opens back up in April, they may pull baskets in the event of heavy spring rain to keep the course from getting destroyed with the mud. A really great thing that they're protecting the property, but in the spring when everyone is itching to play, it's a little bit of a drag.

– The course is largely free of trash; however, there's broken glass around many of the teepads. Not as much an issue if you're out for a round with friends, but I bring my dog with me golfing frequently and I'm always worried about her cutting her paws.

– The city of Madison has a permit for the course: $40/yr gets unlimited play at Hiestand and Elver. It's great to see the money put to use with the landscaping and equipment (even since a few months ago, there are new signs and garbage bins)

- Well designed course.
- Two tee pads and 2 baskets for each hole.
- Blue (long) baskets catch great, Red (short) baskets are decent.
- Great use of elevation.
- Variety of shots.
- Open field to practice in.
- Glide Disc Golf is right across the road.

- Course gets very busy!
- Have to park on the road. Can be limited space on busy days.
- The area the course is in isn't the greatest.

Such a great course to play! At least 2-3 weekly leagues take place here. Always plenty of people playing! Glide Disc Golf is a great shop to check out before or after your round.

- Excellent use of elevation, combining uphill, flat, and downhill holes in an order that flows well through the course.

- Fair use of wooding throughout the course. Nothing felt too overwhelmingly wooded and there weren't too many "gimme" open holes.

- Excellent facilities, including color tee signs, benches, and can crushers at every teepad and next tee signs at most holes. Glide Disc Golf is just across the street if you need to replace a disc you lost (somehow, there's not too many places to do so) or browse for a new addition to your bag.

- The scenery is pleasant for being in a city, with nice vistas on certain holes and pretty woods.

- Two sets of tees on every hole (except 3) and two easily discernable baskets on each hole provide four ways to play the course in a fairly compact space.

- This course is BUSY, and for good reason, especially on a weekday night like I played. Try to play before 4pm on weekdays if at all possible to avoid running into a group on nearly every hole.

- There's not all too much varitation in hole design in terms of holes being straight or curving to the right slightly, but the elevation masks it fairly well.

The course is pay-to-play, $5 per visit or $40 for a season pass, but in my opinion it is well worth it. This course is well worth a visit if you're in Madison or the surrounding area, just make sure to visit on off hours if you don't like groups behind you breathing down your neck while you play.

Hiestand Park is a comprehensively above average city parks course that covers all the bases well.

1) Dual Tees & Pins - Every hole has two concrete tees (except hole 3, which has a single tee), which are all suitably large and pretty grippy, as well as one Am (red) and Pro (blue) basket per hole. Thus, the variety of golf you can experience is very good - the am to am configuration is littered with ace runs galore, the pro to pro configuration will give a stiff test to your length & accuracy, and mixing and matching the above will yield a different round entirely. Pro baskets are all new blue banded DISCatchers, and the Am baskets are red powder coated Mach 5(?)'s, all in good condition. All tees had good signage showing hole length and pin locations.

2) Seclusion & Navigation: The part of the park that the disc golf course occupies is nearly 100% DG exclusive - there looked like a walking trail that came kind of nearby a few times, and a badly shanked drive on a few of the early holes may get entangled with other park uses, but this is a disc golf centric park for the most part. Hole to hole transitions were mostly no-brainers, and the only ones that were even semi counter-intuitive had next tee signs clearly directing you where to go.

3) Beauty & Maintenance: I may be emphasizing this because I played in mid color change fall, but goodness, the course was absolutely beautiful this time of year. Some of the wooded corridors you will shoot down look like what you will see in professional nature photos. It follows that the maintenance of fairways and rough on this course is mostly very good - as on any wooded course, you'll be doing some weed-whacking if you really shank one, but the fairways are generally quite well-defined (no real "poke and pray" holes!), and you shouldn't be spending a ton of time looking for shots that only get into the edges of the rough. I don't remember seeing much, if any trash, laying around.

4) Elevation: Hiestand plays on and around a large hill, so elevation comes prominently into play on many holes, which is cool. Hole 5's pro basket, in particular, plays on top of a sizeable ridge with a retaining wall beneath it.

5) Extras: Community board and a pair of practice baskets by tee #1, and nice stone benches/trash cans by many, if not all tees. Plenty of shaded areas and benches under the tree canopy for hot days.

Mostly nitpicks, but Hiestand does have some limitations.

1) No single signature moment: Hiestand does just about everything very well, but nothing superlatively well. There's no Silver Fox Hole 17 here. The closest thing I can come to a "signature hole" is 3's downhill bomb (to be fair, it is a cool hole!), and even that type of hole is not terribly uncommon in this area.

2) Parking: Can't really fault the course designers here, but there only street parking here. I played just a bit before dusk when there were few other players on the course, so it wasn't a major problem for me, but I understand Hiestand is often pretty crowded, and I can see parking being an absolute nightmare if you've got a group every other hole on the course.

3) Bugs: Even on a cool fall evening, there were still insane swarms of mosquitos in places. This can't be fun to deal with in the height of summer.

4) Pro/Am Basket Spacing: The red and blue baskets were awfully close to each other on a handful of holes. 18 was the worst offender - IIRC, a gray ace on either pin would still have you attempting a putt inside the circle at the other basket. A few holes could have used some more spacing between basket locations to avoid having them both play as a nearly identical hole.

A quick note regarding P2P: I will personally attest to this: Before playing this course in October of 2019, it had been a decade+ since the last time I played Hiestand (it was free then), and one thing that struck me is that the general condition of the course in that timeframe has improved substantially. I can tell the P2P $$$ is being returned to the course. I'd happily pay the $40 (I think?) annual pass if I lived in Madison (I do so for the Milwaukee County Parks courses), and while I don't love dropping $5 spots to go thru single plays of city park courses, this is one I can live with.

There was also what appeared to be a disc golf shop across the street, which is cool too. I wasn't in need of anything, but that's a nice amenity to have if you need it.

Overall, Hiestand is a delighful course that scores highly across the board, and while I'll stop short of calling it a true destination course that you need to come and play no matter the travel, it's worth a play and the drive if you're within a 100 or so mile radius. Price of admission also entitles you to play at fellow Madison course Elver Park, as well, if you want to make a day of discing in Mad-Town.

- Challenging length and difficulty without being ridiculous
- Great use of natural elevation changes
- Course easy to follow

- Mosquitos get bad the second you step off the fairway and into the woods to find a stray disc
- Can be a bit tricky to locate the baskets from the tee, even with the maps

- $5 fee is worth it. This was a genuinely fun course to play.

Multiple tee pads. Good mix of shots and good use of elevation. We played the long pads. Rewards smart style players that stay in the fairway. Aggressive scoring opportunities but make you pay if you go in the rough. Good value for the $. Local Discgolf store located across the street from parking for the course. Well designed in terms of flow.

Although the course is designed well for flow, the short pads looked really close, and many times we had groups behind us cut across our fairway not even realizing that we were in process of teeing off from the long pads. Course could use some warning signs in a few places for safety. I think some of the short pads could benefit from maybe a little longer layout. Didn't look like there was many places to park a car. Didn't see any bathrooms or water on the course. I may have missed where they were though.

Really liked this course, it fits in well with the other courses in the area. Played it right after I played Elver in the same day. These two courses are great for 2 rounds in the same day, I think they compliment each other well.

different looks, not too technical but offering a challenge to my group. Hilly and very nice views. The course is hidden from most of the urban area that surrounds it. The pay to play aspect is a bit disconcerting for a city as liberal as Madison, but, in this day and age I suppose it has become a necessity. Well marked, with directional arrow to the next tees. I WOULD travel here from Milwaukee again to play.

As long as it continues to be maintained and as long as the crowds don't start to back up it is a lot of fun. No parking lot (park on the street nearby).

I am not promoting anything in particular, but I always like to say thanks to people who have disc golf shops nearby . . . . this one is across the street at the end of a small strip mall . . . they guy is getting it together, and he has more discs than most shops I have seen . . . . if you want something (I was looking for lighter weight disks that I can't find on the internet . . . .he came up with three).
Just sayin'

A wooded, technical, hilly beast of a course on the east side of Madison. I've logged well over 1000 rounds here and gotten 15 aces on three of its holes alone, but it's still a challenge that rewards great shot making and penalizes a person for being off just a little (clip a tree on 6 and go left and have to make that 150 foot lefty spike anhyzer recovery and you'll see what I mean).

It was once overrun with trash and disc thieves, but the city has gone to pay for play and the course is now clean and they have made numerous improvements in the infrastructure.

Very well maintained course in a city park. Scenery is definitely above average, especially for being stuck in the middle of town!

Two concrete tee pads on nearly every hole, almost all in good repair. Grippy and 12' long. A few that could use some updating (hole 9 long, I'm looking at you).

Tee signs have distances, minimal topography, and pin placements. Only thing missing is a way to identify which placement is in.

Nice use of elevation in certain places. Also, the different am and pro tees offer much different lines and distances. Very well done on this part of the design.

Good mix of open and wooded holes. The short tee fairways are mostly pretty open here, so the beginning and intermediate players should not be intimidated. The long tees offer a far larger challenge. Long lines, and tight. Your game gets a workout, but every hole has some sort of fair line to it.

There's not a ton to gripe about with this course. It does get quite busy during peak times, being right in town.

Like many of the Madison area courses, there's a lot of straight, or left to right type holes. They're mixed in pretty well, but you definitely notice it by the end of the round.

$5 pay to play is a bit steep, IMO. It's a nice course, but that much, for a city park, seems like gouging, especially if you factor in how much traffic there is.

This is a really solid course, especially from the longs. It's definitely the sibling of Elver, and has much the same feel to it.

Glide disc golf shop is directly across the street from hole 1, and offers up a huge selection of fairly priced discs, as well as an owner (and employees) that are more than willing to help with your disc selections. Just don't get suckered into buying a Champ Viking.

Nice course to run, and if you mix it with Elver, will make for a great day of throwing!

The course is well-balanced, with a nice blend of lengths and shot shapes. The course varies from open fields to tight wooded holes. Each hole has two concrete tee pads and multiple pin locations (though they don't seem to get changed very often).

This a popular city course, so it's usually very busy. The course also suffers from trash and vandalism, though the new pay-to-play requirement seems to be improving that. More than any other course in Madison, this one seems to attract the beer-drinking, pot-smoking crowd. This can lead to some slow groups and, on occasion, belligerent players.

This is a nice course overall. I'd rank it second among Madison courses, behind Token Creek/Vallarta-Ast. The scenery of the course is pleasant, as are the views of the city.

- Very easy to navigate where each hole leads
- Very nice mixture of open and wooded
- Great course for anybody (Lefty, righty, Backhand, etc.)
- Good mix of distances
- Quality baskets
- Pro shop across the street

- Brush is tough to find discs in when it is fully grown
- Some teepads are very dusty which causes a lot of error
- Too much broken glass, cigarette buts, and grass pulled up

$5 to play for afternoon or $40 for a season pass
(Pay to play only for ages 17 and up)

Has a mixture of flat lands, hills, and trees. The holes change up a lot making you utilize your different skills. A couple tee offs overlooking the city of Madison resulting in a great view.

Sometimes there's an abundance of people. It's in the city of Madison so on some days there will be other disc golfers or soccer players in the area. Best to go in the early morning to better avoid the crowds.

Probably the second best course in the Madison area but still a good course.

The course offers a variety of holes and shots. There are many technical holes in the woods, some open holes, many birdie opportunities. The holes in the woods definitely require some technical and accurate shots, but are certainly fair. The lanes in the woods are quite wide with scattered trees in the middle of the fairways on many holes. This gives you the opportunity to chose between several different lane options and make the course quite unique. Trees definitely play a bigger role from the long tees. There are also a bunch of holes with nice elevation change, including 3, 15, 17, and 18, which offers a nice change of pace. Several holes, including 8, 10, and 17 have role away pin locations as well. Hole 3 is about 500 ft. downhill and is definitely the signature hole on the course. Personally, my favorite hole is 15. It's an awesome downhill hole with a wide open fair with woods on both sides. When it's calm, I love laying out a long, slow turnover shot. The maintenance of the course is also well done. I throw RHBH and the course offers many opportunities for throwing hyzers and anhyzer shots. It is a great course for both left and right handed players, regardless of whether you backhand or forehand. The city also does a nice job of moving around pin locations throughout the season, which makes for a nice change of pace. There is also a practice pin near the first tee pad, which is nice to warm up on.

The course is always busy. It also lacks quality landscaping to prevent erosion control, which makes many holes muddy after a rainfall. The signs could also be improved, along with adding some benches and more garbage cans.

I go to school at UW and this course is very comparable to the courses I play in Minnesota. The only odd thing is that everyone is Madison play the short tee pads, which was quite a change for me. I have played the course a few times from the long tees and it certainly makes the course a lot more challenging. I also can't wait until this course and Elver are pay to play next spring so that the things I mentioned in the cons section above can see some improvement. It will also help with cleaning up the course a bit and getting rid of some of the rift raft. The course has a lot of potential.

-Easily accessible area, right off of one of Madison's main roads.
-Well maintained.
-Some variety (see cons)
-Multi-pin placement changes the course every time you play, giving you a new challenge many times over.
-Good blend of long fairways, wooded challenge shots, uphill, and down hill.

-Very busy course
-Could use more of the park and have more variety.
-Lots of overgrowth on both sides of fairway make it hard to find stray disc.

I love this park, I typically try to go at night, when less people are present.
I feel as though they could have used more of the land to make the course vary in different areas.

It's hard to add to what the other reviews have said in either category, but I'll go ahead and try to keep it short.

> Nice, large, level red and blue tee pads.
> Decent Tee signs with accurate distances and reasonable display of pin placements.
> Multiple pin placements that look like they'd really offer a different game.
> Amazing use of the location, terrain and nature.
> Great variety of shots.
> Excellent mix of risk and reward by creative use of obstacles and topography.
> Clean and well maintained.

Like the previous review, there isn't much "bad" to say, just nit-picking.

> The course feels like the holes could be longer in many places, even playing from the blue pads. I'd have liked a few more holes where I could really let it rip.
> There were a few safety issues on the course because a couple of fairways overlapped tees for the next hole and I almost knocked another player out with a drive that went just a few feet out of sight... sorry.
> The blue tees could be placed at slightly more creative angles... but they're still very welcome on a course that already felt a bit short.
> I hate to be "that guy", but there were way too many players on the course that felt perfectly at home lighting up their joints in front of everyone. I don't mind the pot smoking at all, but DGer's have a hard enough time with negative stereotypes turning off the general public (and especially the parks depts.) without people going out of their way to reinforce that negative impression. Some jacka$$ even spray painted 420 in giant silver letters on a tree right in the middle of a fairway. Try to use a little discretion, jeesh.

I'm from way, way out of town and stopped through this course while visiting relatives. Very, very impressive. My home town may have a lot more courses than the Madison area, but this one is as good as any I've played. It is so obvious by how beautiful and just downright scenic Hiestand Park DGC is that the designer was given full reign to make this course and if they weren't, they did the best job ever of making good use. I love the way that each hole felt totally unique and in many cases, like I had just been teleported a hundred miles just by walking to the next tee because of the change of scenery. I don't know if the wind is always as much of a factor at this park, but it was really blowing when I played and made for a very hard game that blew any chances of a good score for me.
Getting some more length and a little more curve out of some of the holes, along with some Mando signs, would easily move this course into the 4.5 to 5 range for me.
Locals, cherish this gem and give respect to the MadCity Disc golf club for keeping it so nice.

- Am and Pro Level CementTeepads
- Multiple Pin Placements
- Practice Basket
- Tee signs
- Everything on the land is so well used. I think the designer must have had alot of freedom in the design.
- Hills, Drop offs, Woods, and Open are all well utilized
- Greens aren't as guarded as they are dangerous. Knowing when to layup saves big strokes.
- Pro teepads add a much harder challenge, altho not much difference from am pads as far as line to the basket.
- Power control and shot placement/angle are required
- Fun!!!
- Really works your mental game.
- Smart play gets better scores. In other words not a pitch-n-putt
- Some benches and trash cans
- Glide Disc Golf is a short walk from Hole #1

*I can't think of anything I really care about so I'll be picky*
- Could use way more trash cans and benches
- Better Tee Signs
- I'd like to see them make some slight alterations to make the hole more different from Pro to Am pads. Letting certain trees grow out more could easily solve this.

This is Madison's best course. Elver isn't far off though. Its appealing to all from chucker to Pro. Its a short trip from the interstate. If you only have time for one course when coming through PLAY THIS COURSE.
The short pads are more geared towards the REC and INT level players. The long pads are more for your ADV and PRO level players. The course gets a great deal longer on the Pro pads. This combined with the dangerous greens makes for some tricky golf. Scores can easily get away from you. Take your dueces when you can cause your gonna get a bogey or two.
I gave this course a 4 but think its capable of a 4.5 with the changes I mentioned in the Cons section.

- Course is set on and around a very hilly and wooded section of this large park. There are lots of other things going on here, but it seems well separated from the course itself. Holes are pretty evenly split between fairways bordered by rough/forest, and holes inside the woods.
- Some very tight and interesting lines to be found in the woods here, from both sets of tees. A couple RHBH hyzers and straight shots, but the majority are of the RHFH or anny variety. Tough tree placement off the tee, on the fairway, and near the basket demands very good accuracy start to finish. Elevation changes in here are used well, with some sharp downhills, some over-the-hill shots, and some uphills.
- Holes that border the forest also have great character, due to both elevation and proximity to the rough. Uphill shots include #1, with a smaller fairway, #4, with a RHBH anny (rough/rollaway on the right), and #17, a steep slope with a protected basket and a rollaway fairway/green. Downhills include a bomber on #3, with a creek behind the pin, and #10, a long shot with a sloping, undulating fairway and green. Good stuff.
- A few holes play out of and into the forest as well. #14's blue tee is nearly half in and half out, with rough waiting outside the window. Going back in, #5 has an excellent finish, a long valley hole that finishes up and right into a clearing in the forest.
- Good amount of sloping greens here, both from the natural terrain as well as some tough placements. #5's basket is on a built-up ledge on a hillside, and the hilliest holes are just natural rollaways, in a few different directions.
- Awesome mix of hole lengths here, from both sets of teepads. Plenty in the 300's and 400's here from the blues, with a few either which way. The short holes feel long with the craziest lines, and the long holes are of varying difficulty.
- Water on #3 is the only water, but it is in a good spot. Big arms can't go too far past the basket on this one.
- Good teepads, signs, and baskets. Navigation a bit tricky, especially at the intersection by #2's basket. When in doubt go right, more or less.

- Not many cons here. The one that stands out is the uniformity of the more open holes. Almost every single shot out here is straight, with a slight/medium right turn being very useful. There are elevation changes, and there are some trees to avoid off the tee, but otherwise it's almost point and shoot.
- Some of the holes are a little close to each other; look out for early hyzers from #5 when on #4. Also tread carefully by the intersection by #2's basket, a lot of traffic through there.

- Overall, I really enjoyed this course, from start to finish. Great variety going up and down the hills, into, through, and out of the forest. Some very interesting and tight lines inside the forest, complemented by lots of open hilly shots. Staying clean is important, with some very, very thick rough in all areas of the park. Probably a bit much for a beginner, I think everyone else would find challenge and/or fun here, no doubt.

This is a very fun course, and was my favorite of the three I played in the Madison area. It's got some nice elevation, with a good variety of uphill and downhill holes, including one fun downhill bomb. Most holes use the elevation in some way, and it really adds to the variety and fun factor here. There is also good variety of hole shapes, with a balanced mix of right and left turning holes.

There are two nice concrete tees on almost every hole, and they're in pretty good shape with enough texture for good grip. Several of the alternate tees changed The baskets are older, but still catch ok. The layout flowed well enough that it was easy to follow, and there was enough signage that you don't have to walk up too many holes to see where to throw.

The course has a few too many holes in the same length range if you play either set of tees, though if you want more variety you can mix up which tee you throw from. There isn't much late trouble, so approaches and putts aren't too interesting on many of the holes here.

This course was quite crowded when I played, and in talking too locals apparently that's the norm here. That meant parking was a bit of an issue with only street parking (including several spots in danger of drives that go long on 18). It also made for a slow round, many large groups were letting faster groups play through, but some weren't, and there were some large groups of beginners out playing that moved pretty slowly.

This is a fun ace run type course from the short tees, and a more challenging wooded course from the longs, making for good variety. It's a little crowded, but it's a fun place to play and has enough variety to keep it interesting. The short tees are great for newer players, with reasonable distances and a good mix of shot shapes to learn. More experienced players will find some challenges from the longs and will enjoy the elevation and variety.

Hiestand is set atop a wooded hill all fairways have shrubs and trees bordering them...... when i played yesterday that had the alt. pin placements and played shorts.
#1 225' slight uphill with a left fade
#2 281' slight right fade moderate number of trees in fairway.
#3 369' down hill bomber.
#4 250' up hill
#5 320' right fade slightly up hill with the pin up on the retaining wall
#6 260' right fade moderate trees in fairway
#7 180' moderate trees in fairway
#8 276' up two sets of rolling hills
#9 215' few trees in fairway
#10 301' right fade
#11 208' straight shot few trees on fairway
#12 210' downhill moderat trees on fairway
#13 198' few trees on fairway
#14 259' wide open
#15 319' slightly down hill
#16 260' right fade few trees in fairway #17 236' uphill with a two tree defense round the pin
#18 259' left fade.
Pro tees will change the course quite drastically adding more than just distance. Pro shop across the street...

Busy course... gonna be sitting/waiting if its a busy day.. water fountain would be nice.....

Its a great course.... everyone should play... elver and token creek are close too... i play all these courses decent amount of times a year....

This course is a must play for every disc golfer. It's great for beginners and still fun for pros. The holes are so scenic and well structured that it's like playing a video game. It's the best course layout I've ever played hands down, and you can take a good run at the basket from the tee on nearly every hole. I had my hopes up coming to this course and it exceeded my expectations. Not to mention the "Glide" disc golf store is right across the street.

The am tees are fun, but they present no real challenge. I shot a -6 first time playing. Next time I'll hit up the pro pads. Also, this course can be a little crowded, expect people playing through or groups in front of you.

I've played a decent number of Wisconsin courses and this is one of my favorites, if nothing else, because it's uniquely Disc golf. Some courses are just parks that also have baskets, and some courses are meant to mimic ball golf courses, this one is the kind of course that defines disc golf. You take one look at it and realize that all it could be is a disc golf course.