Tatum Trails plays along the periphery of a well-tended city park, mostly through wooded areas that are otherwise unused with a few more open patches sprinkled in to offer some variety. Conflict with other park goers is thus minimized (although there are a few stretches where this may not be the case on a busy day).The course is short, meaning it's beginner friendly from a distance perspective and easy to play through quickly. It's a nice choice for locals looking to scratch the itch to play.

Most holes are heavily wooded shots in the 200'-250' range, offering some level of technicality. The more open complements to these allow for a reprieve and also improve the course's beginner friendliness. The movement between wooded and open sections is itself a nice positive.

Grooming was well done when I visited, albeit in late November. Parking is plentiful and the park has a number of other activities to engage in.

I found many of the wooded holes offered unrealistic lines, courting luck and rarely rewarding the kind of sound technical game that wooded golf is meant to. The more open holes often had the opposite problem of providing no real consideration beyond "throw it towards the basket." Thus while the mix of open and wooded is nice in theory, neither seemed executed particularly well.

Perhaps this is due to the fact that the course is laid out in the park's periphery. It often seems squeezed into restricted confines at many points; navigation can be awkward, occasionally looping back on itself, and quarters sometimes feel cramped. Design options were thus limited and the course suffers for it. Perhaps it would have been better off had a full 18 holes not been crammed in.

The shortness of most holes limits variety and sometimes borders on the awkward.

Tatum Trails isn't much of a destination course; I'd heartily recommend both Paul B. Johnson and Ashe Lake over it regardless of your skill level. These courses both have beginner-friendly aspects that are better designed than Tatum, and offer lines, obstacles, and distances that will be much more enjoyable to the experienced player. Tatum isn't a "steer clear" course, but there isn't really anything to lure you here specifically.