Rockburn Branch is a pretty and popular neighborhood park featuring rolling hills and a good variety of hole designs. A few holes are wide open and a few have fairly tight gaps, but for the most part this is a moderately wooded park-style course with moderately wide grass fairways.

Each hole has two tees and two baskets. Depending on the combination chosen, course length ranges from roughly 4,400' to 6,900'. This enables a wide range of players to match course difficulty with their skill level. Many holes offer a choice of lines to the basket, which is a nice feature.

Short baskets are red, and long baskets are white. Baskets are mounted level and catch well. Long tees feature level and adequately sized concrete tee pads (but see cons). Post-mounted signs at each long tee include a descriptive map and distances for each tee and basket combination. "Next tee" arrows on each basket help with navigation. Course amenities were nicely done.

Two practice baskets - one by the parking lot, and another near the first tee. The practice basket by the parking lot is elevated on a boulder. This is decorative but odd because no other baskets at the course are elevated.

Lost disc drop-off at the park maintenance shop, across from the elementary school as you drive out of the parking lot.

Serious and inexcusable safety hazards are abundant throughout this busy neighborhood park. Walking paths are in play on many holes, blind in some cases. The most egregious was hole 17, a 360' bomb off a big hill. Pedestrians and those playing the short basket may emerge from behind cover and cross the line of fire. During a recent round I had to stop my playing partner mid-runup when a pedestrian suddenly appeared walking across the fairway. To quote a repair guy we hired to fix some bad drywall work: "What drunken sailor made this mess?"

But wait, there is more. Some of the paths between holes cross fairways. Examples include between holes 3 and 4, and between holes 14 and 15. There are also tees in reach of a poorly thrown drive on several holes.

Yeesh.

More mundane cons are also present. Concrete pads at the long tees felt very smooth, and could become slick in wet or muddy conditions. During the growing season, rough on several holes can eat discs. No tee sign or post at the short tees, which are natural and marked by a wooden toe board.

This is a popular course so expect frequent backups on nice days. Fairly long walks from the parking lot to the first tee, between holes 10 and 11, and then back to the parking lot after hole 18. Directional signs would be helpful on some of these long walks, especially where paths branch.

Rockburn Branch was redesigned to remove holes located in the floodplain and the adjoining forest conservation area. Unfortunately, the holes that were removed were some of the most memorable in the local area. Years later I can still vividly picture some of my best (and worst) throws on those holes.

Sure, the old course had plenty of filler holes, safety issues, and conflicts with non-disc golf activities. But man, those memorable holes compensated for many faults.

Since the redesign, Rockburn is just . . . bland. With most of the "wow" holes gone, the course's flaws seem much more prominent. Which is a shame, because this should have been (and perhaps still could be) a lovely neighborhood course.

I expect to replay this course occasionally, and would be delighted to bump up my rating if some of the more notable safety issues are addressed.

See "other thoughts".

See "other thoughts".

My context for this review is partially related to the "old" layout, which I'd played many times over the last seven years or so. In that earlier iteration, which about half of the current layout follows closely, the biggest issues with the course design were:
-Interaction with other park uses, especially pedestrian paths on nearly every hole.
-Thick rough, especially prickly invasive species.
-Holes interfering with each other.
-Poor teepad condition (slick rubber mats).
-Playability of several holes near the creek after rainfall.

So it was a joyous day in my household when it was revealed that Eric McCabe would be redesigning the course! It has been a real letdown to see that although the holes near the creek have been removed and extensive clearing has made many fairways much more playable, resolving those particular issues, it's possible that all three other major problems with the course are worse. I'm not ascribing any particular blame to Eric; my understanding is that he was given some untenable locations for holes, gave his input on the layout, and Howard County then ran with the concept and did what they wanted to do all along, which was just remove the holes closest to the creek and forest protection areas. So what do we have now?

-New baskets, which is nice. Having two per hole seems like kind of overkill especially when the pin positions don't play dramatically differently or there are several visible from a single teepad.
-The holes that follow the "old" layout aren't appreciably better than what was there before.
-New concrete teepads, several of which were poorly finished and consequently are smooth and slick. It's amazing that of all the things for a contractor to bungle they NAILED bungling essentially a standard sidewalk section. A couple also have the tee sign posts immediately behind the pad or the sign facing the wrong direction.
-Holes still playing into each other, and still directly interfering with walking paths, playgrounds, and other park features. See below for a rundown of each hole, with hole interference reflected by the hole most likely to throw onto another.
-A recurrent theme of holes not clearly being designed for a particular user skill level, and consequently also not having hole pars set to a consistent difficulty.

1. Essentially the same as the old layout's hole 1. Walking path to the left; visibility can be limited throwing over the initial hill. An okay hole otherwise.

2. Essentially the same as the old layout's hole 2. Throws directly across a walking path, which can be blind especially from the left. Some potential for discs to get onto 6's fairway.

3. Essentially the same as the old layout's hole 3. Throws directly across a walking path, and has a playground in griplock territory to the right not far off-line of the route to the red basket. The proposed mando approximately 200 feet off the tee won't really solve the issue of discs potentially leaking onto 5's teepad.

4. Essentially the same as the old layout's hole 4. Walking to this teepad requires coming around a blind corner directly into the flight path of the hole. Walking to the next teepad requires backtracking from the basket directly into the flight path of the hole.

5. Essentially the same as the old layout's hole 5. Long shots that stall out can certainly reach the walking path.

6. Essentially the same as the old layout's hole 6. Throws directly across a walking path. Perhaps the greasiest teepad of them all; it must be skated on to be believed.

7. The first new hole. It's fine. The short basket isn't much of a hole. The long basket is a pretty good hole.

8. The second new hole. It's fine. A very obvious mud problem will develop in the middle of the hole.

9. A reorganization of the former hole 8 by shifting the teepad to the left and throwing in the same direction. The old iteration threw directly down a walking path, but at least had the courtesy and decency to have full visibility. Now there's a hole without a real gap to the long basket, a bizarro left turn to the short basket, and an oblique blind intersection with one of the prime pedestrian and bicycle paths in the park. There's also a sucker route to throw over the left side, which goes directly over top of hole 2's teepad and potentially onto hole 18's fairway.

10. A mashup of the former hole 10 and 11. The shape of the hole is not terrible but there is a walking path running down the entire left side, with obstructed visibility of the end of it. Making it out of bounds won't stop anyone from going over there, so good luck protecting other park users.

11. A reorganization of the former hole 12 by shifting the teepad and basket both to the left. Short sawed off drives are bound for hole 16's teepad. The walk from hole 15 to 16 will naturally take other players directly across this fairway. The flight path goes directly across a walking path which is blind from the tee.

12. An entirely new hole. It's pretty good but not clear whether it's decided to be a par 3 or 4. The teepad for hole 13 is inside 10 meters of the white basket.

13. An entirely new hole. I think of all the new holes or reconfigured holes this is the best one.

14. An entirely new hole. Depending on where you land the red basket for hole 12 could be a more obvious target than the actual baskets for hole 14. There is a walking path directly to the left of the hole and teepad.

15. That same walking path from holes 11 and 14? It runs down the entire left side of the hole, as well as within 15 feet of the basket on the right.

16. Essentially the same as old hole 13. A downhill hole with a wide spray zone where there is a walking path shortly in front of the teepad, AND both basket positions are directly beyond a walking path. That's a real shame because the hole practically begs you to throw multiple shots.

17. A downhill hole with a wide spray zone where there is a walking path marking the right boundary of the fairway for its entire length. The white basket would actually be an amazing pro-level par 3 if not for that.

18. Hole 18 is parallel to hole 2, but 18's teepad is set back by approximately 200 feet. 200 feet is about the distance that many inexperienced disc golfers can throw before the disc hyzers out 50 feet to the left.


I can see it now. You read this (you made it this far; way to go champ!). You see how many holes I claim are intrusive to walking or biking paths. You think I'm being overdramatic. You see that it's been a while since I've reviewed anything and must assume I've got an agenda behind a 1200-word takedown. You dismiss the review wholesale.

Go play it. If you haven't seen many courses, or don't dabble in design concepts, or haven't been hit with a disc before, bring someone who has done those things along with you. It's REALLY dumb how much time, effort, and money was invested into "redesigning" this course without resolving the real omnipresent issues. Especially with the recent influx of new players, and based on my observations more people using the park for other purposes, this stands out as a prime example of why thinking only about disc golf doesn't tell the whole story. If disc golf was the only thing in this park the course would be a solid 4 or higher (pending teepads and signage being properly installed). As it stands now, I waffled between a 2 and 2.5 because of how many ongoing user safety concerns there are.

First-rate infrastructure (I'm assuming the remaining signs go in). Well-maintained, both grassy and wooded fairways. Really fun holes to play with plenty of challenge, elevation, woods, everything. It's as if the 18 coolest possible holes were chosen in isolation without regard to anything but how each hole plays.

Interference all over the place. Drives go across or parallel to active walking paths. Baskets are blind so you don't know if they are clear of players or pedestrians. A playground is just 30 degrees off line from a tee pad. Tee pads are in line with throws from other holes.

When you are waiting on the tee for 10 minutes for a baby carriage which is on the paved path between two parallel fairways that catch each other's discs, you aren't playing. So it's not really a disc golf course at that point. It's just a concrete pad for twirling discs on.
When you can't throw where you want because you need to avoid another tee or a playground, you aren't getting the most fun out of the hole.
Yes, interference is enough to justify the low rating. Think of it as a 4.5 disc course that gets shut down randomly half the time, and sometimes doesn't let you play the holes at their best.