Long Drivers, will love this Course, Beast Mode required.

You'll also need to shoot many, many fades.

Long Course

Benches at most Tee boxes

Long Course

Signage is not to the standard it should be

Fee

- Long tees on ~7 Holes (4,5,8,11,15,16,18)
- Concrete Tee pads
- Multiple pin placements on all holes
- A good variety of distance and shot shapes throughout the course
- Good Tee signs with pin placement indicators, directions to the next hole, and illustrates major trees/bush clumps
- Practice Basket
- A mixture of tightly wooded and more open park style holes
- Regularly cleaned port-a-potty near holes 1 & 10
- Benches and trashcans scattered throughout the course
- Potential for fun Safari Golf holes
- Course loops around on itself so you can easily skip some holes here and there to fit your time requirements
- A few of the muddier looking fairways do have rocks up the middle to use as stepping stones
- A few candidates for signature holes

- Fairly busy road is used as OB and in play on many holes
- Have to cross the road a few times
- Long walk between hole 1 & 2 and 9 & 10, could use a sign for directions here
- Roadside Parking
- Some of the areas around the Longer Tees feel neglected/slightly overgrown
- A few tee pads feel shorter than the others, definitely would be harder if I had a longer run up

A really enjoyable course that plays alongside a fairly busy parkway with plenty of cars and cyclists. It has a combination of tightly wooded fairways and more open park style holes. Pin locations change relatively often and help to keep some of the more open holes interesting. The rough is fairly thick, but doesn't need to be challenged that much once you get out of the woods. It seems the course design was focused on utilizing the land to maximize the potential.

My Signature Holes:
1, 14, 15 Long

Thoughts for Improvements:
- Grass starting to get worn away near tee pads leaving the typical muddy spots
- A few of the areas around the long tees and the gaps feel overgrown. Just trimming the openings to give a more manicured look would go a long way
- A few next tee/hole signs for ease of navigation

Root River has got a lot going for it, especially for a course as new as it is.

1) Challenge/Variety - this course is going to appeal to a wide range of skill levels with dual tees on some holes, and 3-4 possible basket placements per hole (which get moved around periodically). The 5 hole wooded section early on in the course has 3 or 4 of the 10 most difficult holes in the area, especially if you're shooting at the long pins. Course is more forgiving and much more wide open from 7 on.

2) Tees/baskets - all concrete tees, fairly new (the course didn't even exist until around 2013) and in good condition. Baskets are all Chainstars in decent condition. Judging from MKE county having replaced baskets with color banded DisCatchers at the other County Parks, this could potentially be coming down the road?

3) Tee signs - the old wooden signs have been replaced with new, more comprehensive signage, with pin location indicators and more accurate hole distances than they used to be. Pay attention to the tee signs - this is often going to be the best indicator you get of "next tee" location.

4) Decent coverage with comfort items - benches at nearly every tee, and a practice basket at the beginning of the course.

5) Natural beauty - I love the heavily wooded section early on - this is my favorite part of the course, but once you get into the open by hole 7, it's going to mostly stay that way, but you're still shooting amongst visually pleasing terrain with a smattering of large, mature trees.

6) "Water Optional" - this, I thought, was a nice touch: Water does not really come into play at all if you don't want it to. Several long tees put water into play where you have to cross either the course's namesake river, or tributary creeks, but the short tees (save for 15, where you could still meathook it into a little creek) keep you away from the water.

1) Hole to hole transitions - the course plays alongside a semi-busy parkway, and will force you to cross another relatively busy road (twice, in fact) that cuts perpendicular to the general shape of the course. You'll be crossing roads (much busier than you're probably used to at a DG course) here a lot, and some of the walks between holes can get quite long. Make sure you have a map - the 1-2, 9-10, and 16-17 transitions aren't readily apparent from just following the flow of the course.

2) Trash cans - I've started doing a "water bottle" test (you can call it a beer can test if you wish lol) where I down a drink early on in the course, then see how many holes it takes to find a trash can. I think I was carrying this particular empty water bottle from hole 2 or 3 until I think 8. Course could use more frequent trash receptacles.

3) The early wooded section will lead you to think you're playing an absolute meat grinder of a course through the woods where you need to deploy every shot type & disc you've got, but all of a sudden, you're out in the open after hole 7, and it's more or less wide open from then on out. The overall wooded/open variety is comprehensively decent, but eventually, the optimal strategy of just launching backhand bombs on most holes starts getting monotonous, though you can counter this somewhat by playing some of the longer tees across waterways, and occasional long pins force you into wooded pockets.

4) No parking lot - street parking only. Not the fault of the course designer, but there are parkway roads that hug both sides of the Root River at this point, and though most of the course plays on the north side of the river, holes 1/18 are the only two on the south side of the river, and thus, you'll want to park on the southern parkway road.

Overall, this course is a solid, relatively new addition to the Milwaukee disc golf scene, that when considered as a whole course, does offer a good amount of variety and challenge. Course maintenance is generally pretty good, though I've been advised by the local DG Facebook group to expect maintenance to suffer a bit due to budget cuts related to the COVID-19 crisis.

Root River is a pay to play course, though I think you get good value - a $5 daily entitles you to play at all MKE County Parks courses for the duration of the day (includes Estabook, Brown Deer, and Dretzka), and a $40 annual pass is a damn steal to any area DG player.

Guys with big righty backhand power drives are going to love this course and score well - as a primarily forehand shooting player, I thought there were a lot of holes took away usable forehand (or LHBH) lines by placing tee and basket adjacent to thick woods on the left, so it really forced me to adjust my strategy...I didn't dock points for this - this is my own problem! But, if you can consistently put it 350 to 400' where you want it on an RHBH line, you'll eat this course up. Forehanders and lefties will probably like the wooded section a lot more, as there's much more use for those lines in that part of the course.

Overall, I'm going to stop short of calling Root a destination course that you need to come drive significant miles to play (I'd still put Root clearly behind Dretzka and Brown Deer in the MKE County Parks pecking order), but it's a highly recommended play if you're around the MKE metro area.

Let me start with saying that this is one of the best courses I have ever played, the layout is very nice, a mix of challenging and not so challenging holes. The layout is the same in some spots but changes whenever there is leagues or tournaments at the course. There is multiple tee locations on some holes, most holes have 2 or more pin locations, it is very well kept when it comes to maintenance. Having such a different layout almost every week can be fun for someone looking for a good time.

The walk from hole one to hole 2 can be a bit confusing for a first timer, from the bridge you need to walk left a bit, not a major drawback, just something that bugs me a bit.
When the plants are overgrown, it can be very hard to find your disc if you go OB.
Sometimes you cannot see where the pin is, but the sign says where all of the locations are, so you can assume and throw that general direction.

The course sometimes has people who don't know that it's a disc golf course, so be careful when you are throwing, you don't want to be on the news for clocking a kid in the head with a disc. Also watch out for cars when crossing the road.
Overall if you're looking for a nice course in SE wisconsin, this is the one to play.

Arguably within the top 3 best courses in the Milwaukee County System. Can't wait to see what the future holds for Root.River.Course, has only gotten better with each passing season.

Could use a few more garbage cans. Ash bore has forced removal of a few trees, hopefully they will be replaced with new trees.

Beautiful park, the middle of Whitnall park area which is an extremely well maintained area.
First few holes are challenging enough as they take you through some heavily wooded area, but with enough room to make reasonable shots. I don't think anyone can play the first 9 unscathed (by trees). These are the shortest holes on the course.
#2 is hard to find if you have never been there but now that the paths between holes are well worn the rest of the course is easy to follow.
Multiple tees (hey, I'm old I play from the short tees, mostly for "3's" which make even the short holes difficult. Once out of the forest the holes are pretty much wide open, and very long (the longest, from the farthest tee, is 543 feet).
Hole maps are easy to follow (multiple possible pin placements).

It's a little difficult to find as the Park doesn't really have signs pointing to the course. Some nights there are leagues so the course is not available all the time (this is not inherently a bad thing unless you don't have the time. I hear the leagues are well enough attended).

A wonderful park to bike/gofl in, with limited traffic. Near the botanical gardens (very nice). The day we chose to play there were very few others out (Saturday at 11:00 a.m.). No real amenities or water that we could find (at leat none we would actually go into).
I'd go back. This is what Estabrook SHOULD be . . .
I still don't like the fee, hence the 3.5 and not a 4.0

- First off, Todd Farnham has done some kick butt work here to get this course from a "meh" course to an absolute delight to play.

- Long and short tees on several holes making the course harder or easier to your likings.

- Mulitiple Pin placements on every hole makes it so that you might not see the same course too often.

- A lot of very tight wooded long fairways makes for even easy holes to be challenging.

- A very good mix of Long and Short.

- Concrete Tee Pads

- Tee Signs for now. The parks department is installing new tee signs so this will be fixed this summer.

- If you have never played the course before then getting to some of the holes may be a bit tricky since you have to cross a few roads and walk a little.

- Still has that just cut, fresh new course feel to it at times so some holes need a bit of time to be walked through before they start to open up

- Needs a parking lot

- Can be RHBH friendly at times. You are playing adjacent to a parkway and a majority of the time the road is on your right so the righty hyzer is favorable a lot of the time, but its gotten a lot better over the years.

- This course has really changed over the last two years and it is for the better. It is now a lot of fun to play and not just "another course"

Fun course with varied shot types and hole layouts.
Usually not crowded.
A lot of brush has been cleared away allowing easier navigating and locating of discs that missed their mark.

Only 2 pin positions per hole and they don't get changed very often.
Some holes on the back 9 get a little repetitive.
Need more garbage cans. (This shouldn't be a problem but some people are litter bugs.)
Cars/bikers/joggers can get distracting while teeing off on a few holes.

This course has come a long way since its inaugural year in 2013. I have high hopes it will continue to evolve and become one of the better courses in the area.

A nice addition to Milwaukee disc golf. Concrete tees, nice baskets, benches, decent shot variety. Short wooded holes and longer open holes give plenty of birdie opportunities with more distance than it's neighbor Valley View. The road has been mostly taken out of play with the new course layout, and I personally think the new layout is a great improvement (my only real complaint with the old layout was the road being in play on multiple long holes).

The course gets muddy after a rain,
some people litter here (despite garbage cans)
some people don't yield to bicycles/joggers

Since the last review for this course was before the re-design, I think that the old 2.58 rating did not reflect the course as it is today. My rating would have been a solid 3, so a 3.5 is not much of a stretch.
Looks like there's room for alternate pin placements and alternate tees after the re-design, hope the course will continue to evolve for the better.