Quality tees & baskets. Decent length holes/course. A few nice holes. Nice playground by Hole 2. If you're a beginner, some wide open holes. If you're an expert, several high risk/reward holes.

Major disc loss hazards (usually throw over or close to creek and/or super tall weeds). When not scary hazards, often boring (completely open). Need to plant some trees and/or small bushes. Hard to find start point and parking (started at Hole 2, since already reversed from ~14 and 1 wasn't obvious). Poorly marked. Majestic oaks around perimeter mostly - so not many shady holes. Septic smell on one end of the course.

This is a challenging course. Not impossible, but challenging.

Weekly $8 dollar doubles tournaments 6 pm Tuesday's.

Under the bridge at hole 2 is a disc retriever to fish your discs out of the shallow water. Look inside the railings under the bridge.

My "Pros" section is small for a reason. There are not a lot.

Good holes:

4: Very nice par 4, whip out your most under stable driver. Very rewarding birides! Not a gimmie.

6: Nice placement shot with an elevated basket,

15: Nice par 5, 850 ish feet, very birdie-able.

You are playing in a marsh. If you decide to play this course, I just want you to understand its a full blown marsh. I don't mean the ground is a little wet. This is a marsh. Cattails, standing water, algae, frogs, snakes, bugs, long saw grass.

This course loves to eat discs. I'm just going to say, with no exaggeration, if you throw in the cattails, your disc or shoes and socks are gone.

Horribly maintained.

Bring a towel, the water is absolutely foul. In every imaginable way. If you need to get a disc out. Be prepared.


Not a nice area, I hide everything under my seats when I park my car. Do not leave valuables in your car.

Parking lot is terrible and hard to find. Also once you get into the parking lot, you'll probably be very confused to where the disc golf is. Tee 1 is hidden behind giant park district service trucks.

Bad holes:

Hole 1, 2 and 3 are a little lack luster, not terrible, but they don't really get you engaged in the game.

Hole 7: Cattails right, you do not want to go it.

Hole 8: Very brutal OB if you play doubles. You have to have the right disc for this hole. If not, no big deal easy lay up and the hole is enjoyable.

Hole 9: I'm not going to type an essay describing this hole. But its a ticky tacky shot in which you throw a boring hyzer, from an open tee pad, through a mini tunnel for a lay up shot. It's impossible to drive the full 300 feet of the hole, because if you put that sort of speed on the disc you cant make the mini tunnel's turn. I tomahawk over.

Hole 10: Cattails = dead disc

Hole 11: You have to own a sidewinder or roadrunner for this hole, you have to play it with a spotter. Or you'll search forever! Even if you make it over. There is no vision whatsoever of the basket. You throw blind over 75 yards of cat tails in all directions.

Hole 12: Long grass on the left and you're searching for 20 minutes at least.

Hole 13: I hope you're a lefty, and the way the trees are discourage forehands.

Hole 14, if you throw a disc into the woods on the left. It's super gone. It's very dense brambles, thorn trees and thorn bushes.

I don't mean to rip on the course too much. I just want people to know what they're getting into. The course does offer some nice holes, and even some elevated baskets. Just prepare to lose a disc.

The course also has a local disc hunter who spends all day everyday hunting discs and if your name and number is on it. He will call and sell it back to you for 5 dollars.

The people are not friendly

This course starts off fun with hole # 2 going across a creek. Lots of long distance holes to let out some nice drives!

Very Very difficult to find where the next hole is. ended up throwing hole 8 into the hole 11 basket and then had to backtrack to find hole nine. Lots and lots of wind so you have to watch where you throw your disc because can be lost in the swampy marsh areas.

- The course is fairly wide open and its easy to recover from a bad throw.
- You get to use your distance drivers a ton.
- Newish tee pads on most holes.
- Recently added tee signs that show distances from normal and alt tees to the normal and alt baskets.

- There is very little challenge here. The biggest challenge is simply the wind.
- Lots of spots to misplace a disc. Watter on 8 holes (13 if it's rained recently) and 4-8 foot reeds in play on 5 holes.
- As other reviewers have said, the only shot you will need is a RHBH.
- Noticeable elevation changes on just 1 hole.

This is a great course to go out and throw long drives on. This is a fairly easy course to recover on, so go ahead and wing that drive out there and no matter where it lands (as long as it's dry) you'll have a pretty good shot at par.

Nice, long course of verying difficulty. New tee boxes and baskets.

Very very confusing, often found ourselves shooting at the wrong hole. No signs saying where the hole is or the par on the hole. Even finding out where to go next is confusing. Baskets aren't marked by hole number.

On a windy day your disc may get carried into the river or marsh making it easy to lose discs here because almost every hole has some type of natural hazard. Have some way to know where your going if its your first time, you will get lost.

What I personally like and how this course stacks up:
1) Holes with good risk/reward -- C+
2) Holes that have rewarding birdie opportunities -- C-
3) More wooded than open - lots of variety of shots required caused by hole shape and topography -- C+
4) Natural beauty (Appalachian beauty preferred) and seclusion -- C+
5) Multi-shot holes with defined landing zones, good risk/reward and multiple options to play them -- C-

I ranked this course subjectively based on my own personal enjoyment factor...more accurately my "personal addiction factor". 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 tastes will find my ratings list helpful as they chose courses to play and explore.

Over time, I expect to fill some of my reviews in with more descriptive verbiage...if what I say adds 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. See my profile for my rating philosophy.

Shady Oaks has some very interesting shots with some baskets on hillsides and some baskets dangerously close to the creek. Good combination of long and short shots.

I had some trouble finding hole 1 - it wasn't very well marked. The signs are big wooden signs that just tell you the hole number and distance. If you don't know the course, you will probably have some trouble navigating through it. The locals were very helpful in pointing me in the right direction though. The course is very swampy and it does not have concrete teepads - which can cause some slippage in the mud. The baskets are pretty old and they spit out a lot of putts.

It wasn't one of my favorite courses. For me, it just doesn't have greatest atmosphere.