1) While the course is very light on trees, there are specific lines you need to hit on a couple holes to get looks at birdie. Hole 2 and 3 specifically. Hole 2 is a genuinely great hole; ~350ft, low ceiling, and three attackable lines to the pin. The LHBH line is the most open, the up the gut and the RHBH line are both very doable, albeit a little tougher to execute. Truly the highlight of the course. Hole 3 is also about 350ft, a bit downhill and a (pretty much) forced LHBH/RHFH shot through/over the tree line if you want to get in the circle consistently.

2) Grippy, albeit very small, tee pads.

3) Tee signs are detailed and inlayed into the back corner of the tee pads. They have hole maps, recreational par, and some usually wildly inaccurate distances.

1) With the exception of holes 2 and 3 mentioned above the only real challenge here is distance. If you can't pump 350+ most of the holes are a drive, a layup, and a tap in without much chance for birdies. Even a couple of the shorter holes (1 and 7) are deceptively uphill and feel like they play about 30-50ft longer than they actually are. And, due to the general lack of trees, anyone one with 400ft of power is just going to be throwing hyzers off almost every tee and expecting birdie on at least 5 or 6 of them. Gets repetitive very quickly.

2) Some of the tee pads are not level. Hole 1 is slanted very noticeably uphill, hole 5 is slanted downhill, hole 6 tilted a little bit right to left and hole 8 feels very slightly slanted down as well. These all make getting proper release angles and nose angles unreasonably frustrating.

3) Layout is a bit wonky. The walks between holes 3/4 and 6/7 are around the softball fields and could trip up first timers if they didn't check out the map in the parking lot or aren't using UDisc. Also a couple years ago, after complaints from campers, they moved hole 9 to a shorter position and relocated the tee pad literally inside circle 1 for basket 8. When it's busy these two holes can have giant backups for this reason. There is a 'short pad' that gets used for leagues that avoids this issue but most people don't use it.

4) Interactions with other park users can vary from annoying to dangerous depending on the time of year. The walking paths are mostly a non-issue, just pay attention and it's fine, but the softball fields around holes 3 and 6 are the main issue. The ideal line for hole 3 is to throw over the outfield fence and fade back in bounds, which as one could imagine poses issues during games. Hole 6 plays directly alongside the walking path to access the fields and it gets very busy during games. This leads to lots of waiting and backups on the hole. Additionally, teams tend to use the fairway of hole 6 for warm up. Generally they are understanding and will jump out of the way if you politely ask to throw, but every once in a while you'll get a group that feels like they own the place. During the summer these are at least once day a week, sometimes 3 or more. The trees near hole 6's basket are also very attractive to hammock people. Again, like the softball people, they generally move for a minute if you ask politely but I've seen many groups of high school/college kids not care and nearly hit people with their drives. Because of these issues, during the yearly 'River Falls Days' softball tournaments in July hole 6 is pulled for a few days.

5) Holes 4, 5, and 6 play in and around a drainage area and can get hella wet. During the spring they are usually unplayable for a few weeks or more due to the flooding. I've seen the water up to 4s basket, which is at least 5 feet of water, both this spring and after a large rainstorm during the summer. During wet years the area at the bottom of the hill near 4s basket, 5s tee, 5s basket, and all along 6s fairway will almost always have standing water. There was 1-2 feet of water below 5s basket and along 6s fairway for a solid 6 months this year.

I've played hundreds (maybe thousands) of rounds at this course since I started university/moved to town a few years ago since it's the only course within 30 minutes and have grown to dislike the course quite a bit due to the only real challenge here being distance. Maybe objectively this course deserves a 2.0 for someone just playing the course once or twice. But having played it so much, the repetitiveness and other cons all add up to enough for me to knock it down to a 1.5. It's not necessarily a bad course, it just gets old pretty quickly, especially if you can push 350-375ft+ off the tee. For low power players it might provide enough of a challenge to prevent becoming repetitive and frustrating, but I can't give input on that. I'd never recommend driving out of your way to play here, but if you are just swinging through town and have nothing to do it's a quick 30-40 minute round and I'd recommend stopping by and checking it off the list.

Lastly, this course is seeing a redesign in conjunction with general development plans in the park, probably within 2 years depending on how fast the city works. Looking at the proposed layout, the biggest cons (3 and 4) look like they will be mostly solved but the basic issues related to the land itself can't be mitigated with a redesign. The flooding issues could be solved, but that all depends how the city alters the drainage area during construction. The preliminary construction they did this fall does look promising, though.