Pretty area/course. Nice layout and variety of holes.

Hard to find your way around. TOO MANY trees. Like playing in dense woods with no clear fairways and such on MANY holes.

Official Home course for USC's disc golf team.

Lots of variety to be found on this course, some really tight shots, some open ones, all of your shots will come in handy to shoot a decent score. Some good risk reward situations where going for it will either pay off nicely or leave you scrambling for a bogey. Offers more length than the Earlewood course across town. Some decent use of terrain with one particulary nice uphill shot and a fast downhill green. Decent tee-signs help you figure out where to go, and a detailed map is provided online. Teepads, while dirt are generally in pretty good condition.

Even with a map I would consider this course hard to navigate, although I think they made some changes so it would flow better than before. More than a few really tight fairways that could frustrate the beginner and the experienced player. You will hit your fair share of trees.
The course plays in the woods around a series of soccer fields, so particularly during the weekends the park can be extremely crowded. It also isn't in the best of neighborhoods, but with a little common sense you should be fine. Dirt teepads.

I thought that this was a fun course to play, given what it offers. It is a good contrast to the other course in Columbia with its added length. If you only have time to play one course I would say Earlewood, but Owens shouldn't be disregarded. You'd save time by printing off the map, and even more time by going with a local.

What I personally like and how this course stacks up (from the longs):
1) Holes with good risk/reward -- B (funky shaped holes tempt you to really try to get close to pin and will punish you if you try to get too cute.)
2) Holes that have rewarding birdie opportunities -- B-
3) More wooded than open - lots of variety of shots required caused by hole shape and topography -- B (mostly open. Several holes have funky shapes that do not give you a realistic chance to get into putting range....leaving you 40-60' after a good drive or approach that is as good as you can expect.)
4) Natural beauty (Appalachian beauty preferred) and seclusion -- C- (I am not a big fan of the coastal sandhill feel - scruffy and brown)
5) Bonus amount for multi-shot holes with defined landing zones, good risk/reward and multiple options to play them -- C (several multi throw holes, but all but one seems to really add much besides length)

It's all about feeding the addiction, so I ranked this course subjectively based on my own "personal addiction factor". The grades above tell how well the course will draw me back to itself again and again and again. Since I have played a decent number of courses (115 18-hole, 50 9-hole as of early 2009), my hope is that players/explorers who have similar addiction tastes will find my ratings list helpful as they choose courses to play and explore.

Over time, I expect to fill some of my reviews in with more descriptive verbiage...if what I can add anything to what has already been written. For now, my list is more important to me than the verbiage of my reviews.

I fully expect others with different tastes/philosophies to disagree with me....that's the fun of things here. See my profile for my rating philosophy.