This course has some fun, unique holes, but it is super confusing to navigate, even with the UDISC app.

The wife, kids and I played over the weekend from the (VERY short) red tees. We had fun, but struggled quite a bit.

Pros:
- Some fun holes. #8 up the cliff is unique. The hole that goes around the old barn is also unique and fun.
- Turf tee pads were mostly in good shape
- Baskets were all in good shape. Some have aged a little, but all were functional
- You get a good feeling of seclusion, even right next to the Interstate.
- Color coded signage is helpful, but also confusing and easy to miss.
Plenty of parking.

- The layout of this course is the most confusing I've ever played. Even with UDisc, it was difficult to navigate. The red and blue/white courses overlap. Some holes/baskets are shared between the courses. On one hole, discs landed right by us as if from out of nowhere. It was a shared fairway. Could be dangerous if you're not paying attention.
- Red course #8 is a short hole, but you drive up to the top of a a practical cliff. If your disc doesn't make it to the top, you're in for a treacherous climb and hunt for your disc. Footing is poor. Not beginner friendly at all.
- The next hole, #9 for the reds, has a narrow fairway, which I don't mind, but the rough is ridiculously thick. My daughter threw her disc into the rough and I came out with scratches all over my legs. Not fun.

If I were judging by the holes alone, this would probably be a 3 or 3.5. Unfortunately, the layout is so difficult that I can't go above a 2.5 for this one.

It actually has a short/rec course, which many designs neglect these days. That part is mostly wooded so it is playable in the summer and it works a creek into play very well. And you can (usually) play it solo in about 45 minutes. I haven't played the long course nearly as often - it isn't ridiculously long except when they take two par 3s on the rec course and turn them into one par 3. But you also spend much more time in the sun on the longs and it takes a lot longer to play.

They have done a lot of work in the last year or so putting in good tee pads - the old rubber ones stayed slippery all the time and I cracked my coccyx last year slipping on #17 during a standstill throw.

The rough is too rough. It doesn't get enough foot traffic to get beaten into submission, and since there are a lot of trees in the middle of the fairway, a nearly perfect ace run can turn into a bogey if you bounce to the wrong place. That also makes it really easy to lose discs. It has been redesigned several times, so the teepad signs are all but useless. To be fair the club has been working on new signs to make it easier to navigate between holes but the original teepad signs should just be removed. Also, a lot of trees fell about a year ago (Sept 2019) but Durham won't spend any money to clear it out. The local club has applied a chainsaw in the worst places but all that stuff needs to be removed.

Don't forget your bug spray - you will get eaten up it you get off the fairway.

I have a love/hate relationship with the rec course. I've played it hundreds of times because it is 5 minutes away, but if not for proximity I'd never go there. The course design is such that it is RIDICULOUSLY biased toward RHBH throws. 12 holes only have a right-to-left fairway, compared to 2 that are only left-to-right. It is a great piece of land and with a minor redesign it could be so much better.

The long course is much more interesting in that it has a great variety of shots, plus par 4 and par 5 holes.

UPDATE: I'm giving Leigh Farm a nice update after playing the Advanced layout. It's a fun track. My original criticism about navigation still stands -- this is a massively confusing course -- but after playing it a few times, it's grown on me.

+ While the navigation is terribly confusing, it's a huge plus to have so many options here. I've played the Rec layout and the Advanced layout. Rec is appropriate for beginners and rec-level players. The Advanced layout, especially at par 62, is really an intermediate-level course.

+ Lots of par 4's (some of them questionable) set up for approach shots to landing zones and upshots to the green. You don't see too many courses like this (yet) in the Triangle (although this is likely the wave of the future.)

+ Good baskets, color-coded to match the course you're playing.

+ I love the elevation they used here on the Advanced course. There are a few slight uphills and downhills, along with a legit uphill, reachable and aceable, and a fun downhill on holes 9 and 10.

+ I like it when courses take advantage of unique features. Leigh Farm does this with a barn on hole 17. It's a par 4 and you have to decide to go for a right or left fairway, setting you up to go around the barn on your approach shot to a downhill green. Fun hole.

+ The most interesting green on the course is hole 15, also the shortest hole on the course. The basket is on a steep hill. Lots of hills and ravines surrounding the basket. This will force a tester put for your birdie try.

+ There's good variety and a high fun-factor here on the Advanced course. Lots of different shots required and varied hole layouts.

- The navigation here really is a mess. But if you just stick with a layout and play it a few times, you can look past this one glaring weakness. I recommend following the Rec signs and playing to the blue baskets for beginners. For intermediate to advanced, follow the Advanced signs and play to the plain yellow baskets. There's also a Gold layout, which I *think* is the same as Advanced, but playing the longer tee where an alternate tee is available. (If I'm wrong on that, which is quite possible, please correct me.) The confusing part is this is really two distinct courses sharing some fairways and tees. The numbering is off after hole 1, so, for example, you'll see signs for Advanced hole 14 next to Rec hole 13. Anyway, if you can figure the signs out, you're halfway there.

- There are some "poke and hope" holes here where luck is more of a factor than the skill of finding a gap to hit. The hole that comes to mind here is the par 5 (for the Advanced course). I could discern a fairway anywhere. You're forced to just throw it as far as you can and hope for it to get through.

Leigh Farm has improved in recent years. I wish they could start over with new tee signs and next tee signs to fix the navigation. Still, this course is a fun one and worth playing.

Lots of potential, but after all the construction, lots left to do. Signs need to be changed for hole number and for distance, signs for next tee pad are either small and bare wood (making them nearly impossible to see) or nonexistant. Some holes are being worked on still and if combined holes are upposed to have yellow-only baskets, they need to get the blue band off of them. My party met two guys that gave up (a little too easily, IMHO) after playing only 4 holes. When they get this right, it should be really nice. As it is, it's still fun, and I shot 4 birdies on my first time playing the course. So, if you want a little adventure, I say, go for it!

Excellent private setting in a beautiful wooded park. The course has tons of land available including some interesting terrain featuring a hardwood forest, several big hills, a few streams and a good mix of open and wooded area. Ambitious design with Par 4's and Par 5's. Course is made to accommodate a wide range of skill levels as they have attempted the dual pads / dual baskets. The course plays near a couple of historic barns on #17/#18, which kept me going the last few holes when I was ready to quit.

This course has some serious design flaws, namely invalid fairways and a high confusion factor.
Fairway trees make invalid fairways. There are LOTS of fairway trees on nearly every hole. Too much "throw and hope" where a good shot gets treed and a bad shot gets rewarded. You need luck to score here, not skill. It literally needs hundreds of trees removed to create real fairways. In addition to the fairway trees, many of the fairways are strange/awkward angles, not conducive to a discs possible flight path. Nearly every hole is blind, like so blind you still can't see the basket from halfway down the fairway.

I think the dual pads and tees can work, but in this instance they were poorly executed and confusing as hell. I attempted to play the longest pads and longest pins (not recommended at this course, the short ones seemed better designed). The holes are only signed at the short pads (need another set of signs if having two tees) ... and it seemed like the baskets weren't all there and that one of the holes played to the same baskets. In several instances I could not even find the long basket.

Lastly and maybe most importantly, due to all of the above, the course is not at all fun to play. There is no risk/reward and the entire time you are playing you think about how good this course could/should be ... and that it is not in its current state. I wanted to quit halfway through but too far from my car, and only played the last two holes that are near the parking lot to see the old barns.

I was advised this was a "polarizing course" before playing and I'm certainly polarized in my view of it. I'm rating this a 2.5 and could go lower ... but it could easily become a 4.

It's like that brilliant guy you went to high school with that got into drugs, failed out of school and now works at McDonalds. You know he's got a ton of potential, but it's frustratingly not realized right now.

This course has some serious potential with the terrain and amount of land available, and it's awesome to see a longer course with Par 4's and 5's. Beginners or non-advanced level players might enjoy this more as it seemed like the shorter pads were designed better, speaking from the experience of playing the last 6 holes from the shorter pads. The long pads have a few good holes, but were mostly invalid shots and not enjoyable at all.

This reminds me of a course near home (JP Moseley in Atlanta) that was initially terrible and has recently been entirely redesigned to be one of the best courses in the area.
This place needs a redesign or needs a bunch of guys with chainsaws to cut out valid fairways from the existing layout. I was the only car in the parking lot @ 3pm on a Friday ... and was still the only car when I left. There's a reason the parking lot is empty ...

It's a very technical course that has a great mix of holes. There's basically two completely different courses interweaved on the grounds (rec and advanced) and the advanced course has two levels which are both challenging.

Layout - The advanced courses force you to use a lot of different shots. You'll need to not only hit tight gaps throughout but place your disc in a good position as well on the longer wooded holes.

There's a great mix of long/short holes as well as wooded/open holes. One thing I always like about the layout of a course is a mixture of hole types and this place has it all covered.

There's elevation changes that weave in and out of the woods. Some big throws off of mounds and one up on to a mound. The course uses elevation exceptionally well, especially with the basket locations. More than a few are perched on a hill or drop off.

Tons of risk/reward placement shots on this course, especially on the dog legs. If you try to get ahead of yourself you can get punished. The basket locations can be tricky to, go for a long putt and you can be looking at 3 putting easily.

Multiple routes and the ability to try different shots is another huge plus here. Some times the more direct route is much tighter and makes you think twice.

Two basket locations on the advanced course holes, one short / one long, that switches based on the season.

Atmosphere - The parts where you get in to the woods are nice and secluded. The course is built on an old farm and that comes out in a few places. The two mound holes look great when you're throwing off of them, a highlight of the course.

The landscaping has improved vastly since it has opened. A lot of the trash has been cleaned up and some tall grass areas have been chopped down.

The course is never crowded. That's a huge plus considering how busy UNC is right down the road.

Equipment - There's signs up now which are great, they show hole info and a great map. Following the course has become much easier now that it got some wear on it along with next tee markers. There's a map and info at #1.

The tee pads are large and the baskets are in great shape.

****The Rec course is mostly pitch and putt but is good for less experience players and kids. In my opinion it's better than most beginner style courses because it's not a bunch of baskets in a field, you still get to go out and throw through the woods.

Layout - The Rec and Adv courses being interweaved causes problems because in a few places the Rec baskets are halfway up the Adv fairways. It's not usually a problem of people from the other course being in the way but has obviously been a problem with people getting confused.

The fairway for #5 is partly on a gravel road, the road comes in to play on #3 as well but my main gripe with #3 is the B pin position, it's just ridiculous.

#18 isn't the best finishing hole in the world, kind of forced in at the end. A lot of people rectify that by parking next to the buildings at the entrance and starting on #5, which lets you finish on the monster #4.

There's a couple of places where I wish the immediate rough was cleaned up a bit more, you can lose a disc easy out here if you land in the wrong spot.

Atmosphere - There is some glass and trash on some fairways from before the course was built, it's getting a lot better though. The course is still a bit rough around the edges but again, it's getting better.

An office building and parking lot comes in to view on a few holes and you hear traffic from the interstate on a couple.

Eqiupment - There's not many benches and no trashcans on the course.

This is one of the most underrated courses in the area because so many people got confused on their first trips. So if possible play with a guide your first time. If you do go alone remember, Blue band baskets = Rec course, Yellow band baskets = Adv course.

Personally I really like this course, it's very rough around the edges but it's a technically sound course that will challenge you.

Update (12/12) I still like this course, way more than most people in the area. However after more than a year since my original review there are still some areas where I think fairways need to be cleared out more (especially a few landing zones) and there is a lot of small vegetation and vines that imo create un-fairways and should be trimmed.

Other than that I still believe the course has come a long way and you can tell some hard work has gone in to it to for better. Another possible improvement would be to possibly make it less confusing for new/out of town players who so often get lost and frustrated. Not sure how to do it, perhaps make a better map or more signs on the course.


UPDATE (2/15) : They switched around the layout some due to construction and long story short they screwed it up even more than it used to be.

On top of that it's now even twice as confusing because of the flow and due to the fact some of the old tee signs are sitting next to new holes that only match in #, all the info is wrong.

On top of that this course is in worst shape than it used to be, some of the pads are awful.

On top of that they took out my favorite hole.

Downgrade....