Langley Pond's best attribute is its variety: it runs the full gamut of hole lengths, pars, obstacles, and terrain, as well as some interesting combinations thereof. Overall the course plays wooded and technical, but there's enough variation therein that it never feels repetitive or oppressive: more open tee shots with tight landings, multistage par 4s and 5s navigating into and out of tree cover with the lake in play, tunnel shots with impactful elevation, holes with multiple lanes where you can pick your poison, etc. The bordering holes provide some nice counterbalance in the form of more open shots. In total, there's a wealth of ingredients here, so that pretty much any disc golfer is going to find at least a hole or two that they love. For me, those favorites were a few of the longer par 4s and 5s like 15 that require careful play and a balanced negotiation of risk versus reward. For others, it may be the challenging water holes or the bomb's away hole 18. There's something for everyone here.

Course navigation is smooth especially given the unusual layout thanks to persistent signage. There are one or two notable exceptions to this, but the overall experience deserves positive recognition.

The tees are unusual but do the trick. Grooming was excellent when we were there, no small feat for the time of year.

My personal read on this course was that there were a couple stellar holes, a fair few good-not-great ones, and some duds.

There are a lot of instances where you either make the shot or your don't, with little possibility for outcomes between complete success or total failure, as well as scant opportunity to recover from bad outcomes (a key feature in designing longer technical holes IMHO). The holes that have water most directly in play are the perfect example of this, requiring precision flight, finely-calibrated landing (including one that is a modest skip away from landing OB in drainage), a big arm, or some combination thereof, with little to no recourse to negotiate whatever technical limitations exist in your game. These water holes are rarely if ever actually interesting shots, and seem to get by on tension alone, feeling awfully simplistic to me: in truth they were some of the worst water holes I have ever played given the all or nothing nature and high technical requirements, and a lot of the course seems to lean into them.

Part of the lack in calibrating difficulty on these and other such holes comes from the large disparity between the short and long tees. The course is clearly designed for the latter, with many holes losing much if not all of their character when played from the shorts. Having a target audience is fine - many of my favorite courses are outrageously demanding - but then having short tees that are largely not actually integrated into the design seems like a limp gesture. As such, I can imagine a lot of not fun rounds and a lot of lost discs here, without a balancing upside in play.

As stated navigation is largely smooth, but a few spots on the back 9 get ambiguous, which led to some speculative navigation and reversing course on our part. One additional sign demands that we "leave our bags here," presumably because of subsequent doubling back, but given it was our first time playing we had no idea what discs were needed in the intervening stretch so the sign did little more than serve as an emergent joke.

My sense of this course is perhaps the most out of step with other reviewers that it's ever been on this site. While offering a good round for sure, this course was nowhere near among the best I've played, or the next best, or even the best of the rest. The few stellar holes were simply outnumbered by the various shortcomings I mentioned. To each their own, but it's partly why I wanted to weigh in.

I've played one other course designed by DiscGolfPark (LHC in Baton Rouge, LA), which had a similar predilection for advanced play favoring those with big arms, but I feel the style worked better there given the more open park setting. At Langley Pond, this style seems to come more in direct conflict with the wooded and watery obstacles, making for what for me was a less effective mix.

The setting is certainly pretty with some great, expansive views of the lake, but it also felt a bit more municipal in spots than I was expecting given some of the comments here.

Our round at Langley was a supplement to two days at the IDGC, which made for an awesome trip! I highly recommend visiting there if you're this close.

-Great tee signs
-Great tee boxes
-Well cared for by P&R
-Easy to navigate
-Short tees present a sane challenge
-Long tees would be a significant challenge

-Only one open chance to crank a long drive on short tees
-Lake has been drained for a bunch of dam work. Making course more forgiving.

I played this course on day 2 of the Aiken County Open. We were assigned to the amateur tees and I am thankful. The pro tees would have been a HUGE challenge.

I am struggling with where to rate this course. It has everything you really need, but I was not left with a "Wow" moment other than the long tees appearing to be quite difficult. It may have been because the water was drained when I played making everything look more dismal.

I loved how natural terrain was used without feeling the need to put in a bunch of mandos or OB lines. Maybe I was just tired when I played and that lowered the impression. Also, the driving range that was referenced in previous reviews is no longer there. It is replaced by huge piles of rock and dirt. I bet if those driving ranges had been there without signs of construction, the aesthetics would have been much more pleasing.

I rank all the courses I have played against each other and I assign ratings based on a normal distribution (bell curve). For now, this course gets a 3.5, but I definitely think it can go no where but up from that rating. I plan to play in this tourney again next year, so i will see how it looks with the water back in place. i am sure the rating will go up a little then.

3/29/21 Update:

Out of the 68 courses I have reviewed, this is where this course ranks along with similarly rated courses:
Rank-Course, Location
16-Woodruff Leisure Center DGC, Woodruff, SC
17-Shaver Recreation Center Original, Seneca, SC
18-Foothills DGC, Easley, SC
19-Langley Pond DGC, Burnettown, SC
20-Century Park DGC, Greer, SC
21-Pipeline DGC, Spartanburg, SC
22-Zube Park DGC, Hockley, TX
23-Duncan Lake - East, Duncan, OK
24-Lindsey Park - Red Course, Tyler, TX
25-Veteran's Park, Arlington, TX