Note: This review is of the updated layout as of September 24th, 2022. I want to preface this review that I *loved* the old red/white course layout. The course is scenic, well maintained, and technical. There are portions of the old layout remaining, so I want to address my issues with the course refresh.

New Layout Pros:
- Vegetation has been cleared making throw lines clearer and easier.
- Greater variety of hole length. The addition of 2 par 5's and the relabeling of old long par 3's into par 4's make this feel fair.
- New concrete tee boxes on all holes except for one.

New Layout Cons:
- The new layout is even more confusing than the old. Although you no longer have 4 courses overlapping, you now have greatly increased walking distances between holes. Sometimes you have to walk through an entire hole from the old layout to reach the tee box of the next hole on the new layout. You can't even play the old hole because the old baskets have bags over them. I only found my way with the help of the U-Disc app and spray painted signage *on the ground* which will soon be washed away. New players will likely be completely lost.
- The new layout adds 2 very long water holes without alternate tee boxes for players who want to avoid throwing over the water. I find this strange because they had previously eliminated the water hole over Loch Ness II in the old layout.
- They removed / covered the old hole signage. The old plaques which showed the hole layout are now just laminated 8.5x11 sheets with the hole number.

I hope the course redesigners see this review. I was *really* excited to play the new layout. I can tell care and thought went into the redesign, but I feel like it misses the mark... especially with how much additional walking there is. I get the feeling that the players used to the old blue/gold layout set up this new layout with less concern for players who played the old red/white layout. I don't know how permanent these changes are, but please consider these ideas:
- Remove the new water holes (10 and 11). Add the old hole 1 back in. You would then have an 18 hole course that is more friendly to beginners / amateurs.
- There are enough tee boxes and baskets to make the revised white layout 27 or 36 holes, especially since you're skipping over old holes. I would *love* to have a layout with more than 18 holes, and if you made 9 of them near the back 'skippable alternate loop' you could still have an 18 hole course layout where the old red/whites were.

- Tough course, lots of trees to weave around
- Map/marker at each tee
- Brooms for sweeping tee off
- Baskets in good condition
- General direction of pin is marked with yellow tape on trees, definitely helps navigation in the middle of the woods

- Confusing course, with multiple hole numbers for each tee. Played the gold/blue and we spent half the time just searching for the next tee.
- Lots of swap/muddy areas. Luckily didn't lose a disc, but we were very lucky
- No trash cans throughout the course
- The map isn't quite to scale with tee some tee's nonexistent or not easy to find.

Met a couple guys that were planning out future course rearrangement. They said it would soon simplify to just a long/short tee style, not 3 different courses in one. Also plan to make the fairways more easy to follow, cut down trees/shrubs.
This should GREATLY help navigation.

~Highly technical wooded course
~Beautiful park with full recreational opportunites
~Secluded/ serene course environment
~Multiple layouts, pads, baskets
~Decent amount of variety & elevation
~Locals have stepped up recently to take control and make improvements

~Course layout(s) are confusing, navigation is difficult
~Overlapped red, white, blue, gold layouts increase confusion
~Holes have numerous number designations based on layout
~Most if not all holes still need more defined routes
~Lots of clearing, cleaning, marking and upkeep are needed

Played two rounds with varied layouts during a recent C-Tier tournament. Sunny Lake has been officially opened for two to three years now, and has had it's ups and downs. The biggest positive is the group of locals who have volunteered to adopt this course and put the work into maintaining and improving it's current condition. Love to see that for a course with this much potential. I am hopeful that this course will develop over time and perhaps be tweaked to capture it's true essence. The park is huge and beautiful with a large lake in the background. Ample parking and a nice pavilion with portable restrooms are located near the course. Hole 1 starts in the open field and then you quickly dive into a lush woodland with varying degrees of elevation, thickness, rough, and water that the course traverses through. Holes have a wide variety of distances and curves, and while overall they have a similar feel each hole could stand out on it's own. All of the reviews prior to mine heavily detail the layout and navigation issues, so I don't want to dwell on what's already been pointed out. The biggest take away from my experience is that after playing here all day I still have no idea which holes are which and how I got from point A to B....the layouts are massively confusing, but I'm convinced there is a Very good to great layout nestled within all the confusion that is waiting to be unlocked and showcased. Get rid of the overlap and focus on carving in a pristine 18 layout with the goodness that Mother Nature has provided. This rating is based on current condition, with the right direction this could be a local gem.

Tons of baskets and tee areas. Maintained quite well. All in the woods.. so a great course for a hot sunny day. Rough in most spots isn't that bad and typically fairly easy to find your disc.

Tight fairways on quite a few holes. There is a 1000' hole that really does need a couple of extra trees removed or a 1/2 length tee pad for someone not wanting to spend 20 minutes playing the hole.
There are a FEW holes where the rough is pretty thick... just play safe on those few and you'll be a happy camper.

I played it for a tournament and it was a pleasant first time out.

Very scenic park, good signage, overly challenging, no other players (good for me but bad for the course) little confusing to follow so I suggest snapping a picture of the course map before you start. A ton of long good holes....(too much of a good thing can be bad) Ribbons in the trees to help you follow the course....

Tee pads are a little rough, good size but textured poorly. Too big, after playing a couple holes the novelty of throwing several hundred ft on tight lines goes away. Course designer went on a 2 mile hike and dropped 18 baskets randomly along the way, got a little mind numbing after a bit. Thank you though for the accurate map at hole 1. The course needs Some work to open up some more lines, not fun to step up on the tee pad of a 400-1000 ft hole and your forced to lay up or throw hard and pray. (almost every hole) 16 signature looong wooded holes is too much for 1 course. To play this course in an event, the backups would make you want to DNF not to mention ther are little to no chances to score. If you can bite off more then 300 ft on a drive it was luck ( majority of the holes)

Huge amounts of work went into building this course I'm sure but should have gotten help from a more experienced course designer and help with the tee pads. Instead of mixing the am course into the mix the course should have been shortened and 2 course put in. Wouldn't want to play it on a busy day with people out there playing the short course (safety first) can't imagin the backups. Glad I played it though, if you play it bring plenty of snacks and be prepared for a long frustrating round

+ Sunny Lake is one of the few "Championship" level courses in Ohio. The nearly 10,000 ft Gold layout will challenge even the most experienced players with long, heavily wooded holes.

+ Two layouts with concrete tees.

+ There are several holes that I would put among the best-of-the-best in Northeast Ohio. #6, #9, #10, and #11 stand out for me.

+ Every wooded hole has bright pink bands on several trees to help guide you to the basket. This is especially helpful on some of the par 4/5's.
+ Tons of parking available for events.

- After the recent re-design, most of the tee posts are now without maps/information on each hole. There used to be very high quality signs, but they were removed since they would now be inaccurate.

- Another con related to the redesign would be that almost every basket has the incorrect hole number.

- Navigation can be confusing at times, especially if you aren't using UDisc.

While I would consider Sunny Lake a quality course, the general consensus among disc golfers in the area is that it has fallen well short of expectations. I do think it's better than what most people say, but the original poor layout and the sheer difficulty of the course have driven many people way from playing Sunny Lake.

What a crazy course. Sunny Lake offered me a round unlike anything else that I have experienced, for better and for worse. This is a super tough course in the woods of Eastern OH, incorporating water shots in many different ways throughout the round. There is both an amateur and a pro course that separate early on in the round and share tees at times. This review is based upon the gold course layout.

For the gold layout, the designers were definitely going for a championship-level course. It measures out close to 11,000' and has eight par 4's and four par 5's. I have never seen so many 6's in my score before, so the course succeeded in kicking my butt. The course starts out well with a fun shot that starts out in the open and then hits a tight gap/sharp angle in the woods. Holes 2 and 3 also offer fair but challenging long lines in the woods that play to tight gaps where the basket is located.

Use of water and elevation changes is done well here, with many streams and ponds coming into play. Baskets are thoughtfully placed, often being tucked away among trees or on a slope.

The tees are awesome and the tee signs are very descriptive. The next tee signs are very helpful and without them it would be nearly impossible to get around. This is a beautiful park, and it was very well maintained for the most part.

The main thing I take away from playing here is that it is hard for the sake of being hard. I'm all for playing a championship-level course. Just came back from a trip where I played Nockamixon and loved every minute of it. But I felt that this course is unnecessarily hard, if that makes sense. Hole 5, for example, is a tough water carry and has potential to be a great hole, but there isn't really a clear landing zone at the other end. It's basically, you throw over the water and hope that somehow your disc finds its way through a gap somewhere to get to the pin.

Another example is 8, which is 1,000+ feet. The fairway is a very tight gap that you can't really even use a driver on. I found myself often using mid-range discs on these longer holes because of their super tight layout. Now, some of the holes are done really well, like the first couple and the 2-3, but I felt the majority of the round was over the top. The holes didn't always offer true fairways and clear landing zones. The course would improve greatly if more clearing was done and more trees were taken out.

The layout of the course is definitely confusing. You're often playing shared tees between the two sub-courses, but they are differently numbered holes and play to different baskets. I found my way around ok, but you really have to pay close attention to which layout you're following and which basket you're meant to throw to. I really think they should switch the basket colors, since the shorter layout has orange-coated baskets and the longer layout uses the traditional color. You can already see most of the shorter baskets from their tees anyways, so why not switch to make them easier to scout on the gold layout. This is the most confusing course layout I've had to follow. A guide is highly recommended.

While there are a ton of 'next tee' signs, I still feel more could've been used.

For hole 5, you have to walk through the fairway to get to the tee. 16 is virtually unplayable and seems to often get neglected with knee-high grass.

It's a very long hike and doesn't loop back to the parking lot mid-round. I don't normally mind this, but it would've been nice for a course this grueling.

Since this is a huge park, there are numerous entrances. Make sure that you take Page Road to get there. The designer for this course has done an amazing job in this area, and I appreciate the desire to build a championship-level course. It's still in its early stages, but I think the course would really improve with a lot more clearing. Sunny Lake has a ton of potential and is in a beautiful setting. Like I said, it does have some great holes. However, the layout of some holes and the course in general can be improved to be more player friendly. I would love to return if more clearing is done at some point. Again, highly encouraged to play with a guide.

Secluded, quiet park and area. Course is mostly away from other areas of the park. Ample parking. Nice tee signs.

Horrendously confusing hole layout and overlapping Pro/Am course system; fairways crossing and paralleling existing hiking trails; tons of hole to tee backtracking; paths to holes are literally fairways of other holes; muddy, stump- and root-filled fairways.

There might be a great course forever inaccessible, locked away inside the actual Sunny Lake course layout. I had high hopes for this course when I did a walkthrough back when it was still under construction (no tee signs, no tees). Assuming I was just totally off on my assumptions, I was looking forward to playing once the course was a bit more finished.

Unfortunately, the official course layout is actually more confusing than the tangled path I had trekked earlier.

For some confounding reason, the designers decided to stack some sort of a Pro course on top of the Am course. This "Pro" course of course instead named "Gold", to make it more confusing I suppose -- since the baskets and tee signs refer to silver color coding for this Pro course! Sheesh.

The Amateur baskets are orange. Except when the Am course uses the silver Pro (I mean Gold Course) baskets. And vice versa!

Basket #2 literally has no number on it, and then the next Tee you encounter has both #2 and #3 on it (Pro and Am holes).

The baskets usually (but not always) are numbered according to the Pro holes, which means you are for example throwing from Am tee #13, but the hole is Pro #7 (and the basket numbered as such). It is astoundingly confusing.

On top of that, I think Tee #5 is actually incorrectly numbered #6 (since there are two #6 tees).

There are "Next Tee" signs for most holes, but again these use the Pro numbering, but sometimes the Pro holes use the Amateur holes, which means the numbering is way different. I'm having a tough time even explaining how confusing it is!

It's almost comical how poorly though-out this course is. I feel like this was done on purpose, and there is a secret code to decipher the awesome course locked within, and this bizarre Amateur/Gold course system was designed to scare away every last casual player, as well as amateurs and enthusiasts like myself.

Due to this bizarre Am/"Gold" course overlap, you will sometimes find yourself throwing a 921' amateur hole (like hole #18).

On top of all of this, there is so much backtracking and overlap that you are constantly seeing 1-3 tees or 1-3 baskets all within putting distance of each other, making it stupefying as to which hole you are supposed to be throwing at, and which tee is actually the next tee.

Some tees (like the first "#6", which I think should be #5) are literally steps away from another tee for a hole far later on in the course.

There are often 2 or 3 "Next tee" signs for a hole, which is a sign that the course was not well planned at all. Even with the numerous "next tee" signs, you will constantly get lost, pass up other tees and baskets, and have no clue as to where you are supposed to go next. Completely non-intuitive.

I could go on about the muddy, inaccessible fairways, the ill-planned placement of baskets in overgrown tall grasses that you can tell will never be manicured (the rest of the park is immaculately maintained, so to see tall grasses enveloping a basket in early June is not encouraging). But the course itself is such a mess it's not worth analyzing each hole.

There are some (many) holes with lots of potential. The entire course is ripe with potential. Which makes the course that you are forced to navigate that much more frustrating, because the entire time you are just envisioning the excellent course that could be here, right on the very same acreage this travesty of a course has eaten up.

I'd almost have to recommend this course just for the experience of playing possibly the most confusing course I've ever encountered. You will get a slight buzz (or minor schizophrenia) trying to figure out what the designers of this course weren't thinking when they concocted this masterpiece of confusion.

It might be worth it just for that.