Pros: The land is well worked into 18 fairways. The regrowth forest offers some character and ambiance to the course and grounds. Good seclusion and natural beauty.

A wide variety of types of holes exist here, so if a nice diverse scoring experience is what you are after Hyzer Creek will be fun for you. You will find a number of easy deuces, some respectable deuces, some tweeners, and a handful of two shot holes some better than others.

Cons: The layout is choppy and somewhat convoluted. Two long walkouts across a central area break up the flow of play. Some buffers between holes are too small.

Some greens are less than desirable (3,11,16). 3 and 16 are in a creek. 11 and 16 are just small.

16 in it's totality is not a good hole from initial fairway, to landing area, to approach, to green. No lines and the what could be a cool downhill hole ends up being best played with a series of putter layups.

The tweener holes (4,9,10,14) range from kind of fun (10), to almost ok (9,14), to poor (4). 4 is an unreachable hyzer with the angles of the fairway but a boring and straightforward three. Not only is hole 4 a bad design in terms of golf it is also a safety issue as it plays straight towards hole 5's tee pad with very little buffer. There is a net for protection but it seems unnecessary with plenty of space to work with. 9 is unreachable but has an intreasting drive. It boils down to two approach shots and a three though. 14 is a fun uphill drive through trees but is essentialy unreachable and will result in a boring approach after most good drives. 10 is more reachable but just a bit awkward as it is guarded and uphill so to me it makes a better par 3 or par 4 (depending on your skill level) than any of the other tweeners.

Finally hole 18 is forced at best, completely separate from the rest of the layout. It is a cheap but punishing putter shot across a ravine, and causes you to double right back to where the hole started in order to complete the round.

The owner does not always serve his course. His efforts to make his course available to the public range from ambivalent to manic. This is perhaps best demonstrated by the progression of driving onto the property. First off, arriving in the parking area causes a question as to if you are in the right place, as it could be confused with just another mountain camp. Meeting the owner does not quite alleviate the feeling that you are in the wrong place either. While assuring you that it is indeed the correct address the question seems to linger as to whether the owner wishes you even knew that address. Intentionaly or not he does not always make his guests feel very welcome.

very challenging. concrete tee boxes. seating at most holes.mostly shaded. some holes had great signage others ok but they are faded and showing signs of wear. use of all throwing styles needed. it was layed out so you could really play any combination of holes in various random orders if you were short on time or just wanted to throw a few more after 18. ie you could skip 5 and 6 and play 7 and 8 without much walking distance. i did not see garbage anywhere.

challenging. therefore could be discouraging. i did not see garbage cans. thickly wooded outside fairways, or rough, while still having the intended fairway wooded. tee boxes had no standard size. at 6' tall some tee boxes were too small for a one step backhand. in addition they were elevated about ground level. stumps, rocks , and other debris make for an ankle busting oasis in the fairways. if you have weak ankles or poor balance you might want to skip this one. most all the baskets had no back side putting green. it seemed 8ft behind every basket was wooded rough. just seemed poorly planned. map seemed out of scale. we found our way fine, but the intended route descriptions seemed off.

im sure locals will hate me for posting this rating, but this course was just not a 5 star course. just because its " 2nd" best in NY does not make it a 5 star. i wish i would have had the time to play the course twice because i did feel some holes were a little deceiving. there were alot of up hill shots i would have liked another shot at. 5 in particular. it was pretty dry when i played but i imagine this place good be loaded with mosquitoes and deer flys early in the season. might want to bring bug spray with you. mud also inevitable year round as you will be crossing the creek several times. i would suggest a light hiking shoe to conquer the terrain. my girlfriend wore running shoes and she did not fair so well with traction. all in all it was a weird, perhaps unique, course but one none the less.

Points for originality.

Most holes too overgrown with too many trees and stumps.

This is a novelty course.