Out standing in the woods, that is. But, for what it is, The Yadkin Outback is a truly good, nine hole course. For my playing partner and I, it brought back nice, nostalgic memories of shooting at the tone poles with the straight down chains, which were the original targets on the main 18. Painting them bright orange is a very good thing, especially for the eyesight impaired.
Of course, the biggest Pro for the Outback is its adjacency to the main course. Having it take off from a point at almost exactly halfway through the main 18 is, in and of itself, excellent design.
The course overview sign, as it were, with its overhead view of the layout and its course rules of "Don't feed the ticks" and "Don't hit the trees; go around them" is outstanding, function-wise, fun-wise and otherwise.
Otherwise, signage is minimal, consisting of simple, but informative tee signs and directional arrows, often denoting distances and doglegs down the tightly technical fairways. With their assistance, navigation through this thick forest was easy peasy, making it a very nice walk in the woods..
Though number one is a mostly open, up-sloped green grass glen with some guardian trees as you approach the green and bordered by tree line on the left and forest on the right, where the next eight holes are, this is a heavily wooded course, which is not generally my cup of disc golf tea. But despite our mediocre scores, we truly enjoyed this course. Its relative shortness in hole lengths and being just nine holes probably contributed to that. The design does offer a variety of directional differentials, from left and right turning doglegs and curves, to holes, like number five, where you are admonished to just throw it straight. Number five IS a VERY tight, but well defined fairway, as all of the fairways through the forest are. Except at the end, there is not a lot of steep elevation change, which is, by and large, a good thing, especially for old legs and lungs. I'd call it moderately hilly, rather than very. And though it's labeled as a Red level course here, it is more of a solid, White level layout, like the main 18.
Trash cans and benches are placed throughout the layout and there was no litter to be seen. There were, as on the main course, a couple of pairs of benches, again, perhaps, for smoking/non-smoking or toking/non-toking. We especially appreciated the stadium style setting of the two benches at number nine.
Speaking of number nine, with its very functional and aesthetic tee pad of interlacing bricks, it is reminiscent of, but far superior to number nine at Northeast Park. Shooting across a deep, steep valley, with the target at a bit of a higher elevation than the tee, this is absolutely an outstanding side ending hole, that will put you right back to the course's beginning, right beside the main course's number nine tee, where we imagined most players would pick up this course. Though it would be a bit of a hike from and back to the parking lot to play this course alone, it's not all that much further than some others I've played, like Dorton, Creekside or Blacksburg.

The tees, though well marked with outlining timbers, are natural and can be pesky, especially, we imagined, if wet. If one through eight were like number nine, this would indeed be a very good, or even excellent nine hole course.
Some minor mowing and limb trimming would be helpful. Spring growth has greatly narrowed the fairway at the tee end of number nine and the little bit of slightly tall grass could contribute to feeding the ticks.

Again, Yadkin Outback brought back fond memories, hearing the magical music made by the tone poles, whether struck dead on solid, or just barely nicked.

"The Outback" is an optional loop target course at Yadkin County Park. The first review (by nevets4433) is very good and accurate. I don't have any disagreements with his description, but I rate this is a 1.5 because it's 9 holes, too short to warrant a higher rating, it has poor footing on the tees, and while unique, baskets are preferable to tone poles. Still, there are enough pro's to make The Outbook a course worth playing if you hit the truly great Yadkin County Park course:

1. Very tight and technical, made even more technical and unforgiving with the smaller-than-normal tone pole targets. If you've seen the new Marksman baskets from Dynamic Discs, The Outback's targets are about that size. Putting, obviously, is much more challenging. This is a nice course to really work on putting and technical upshots (tee shots here).

2. You really feel isolated waaaaaay off the beaten path here. The rolling hills and forest are peaceful and fun to explore, especially hole 9, which offers the best view on the course (and perhaps better than any views on the regular Yadkin County Park course).

3. I count it as a plus that you can only play The Outback after hitting the first 9 holes of the big brother course. You're not going to make a special trip to play The Outback; anyone who plays here will also be playing the larger 18-hole course. So, playing the "optional loop," as the course sign says, just adds to the overall disc golf experience at Yadkin, and it adds to the peaceful isolation of The Outback.

4. Although this is a short course, it's well thought out: good design, good navigation. There's a good variety of hyzer, anhyzer, and dead straight shots. Hole 9 is the only one with decent length though.

1. Poor footing on the natural tees.
2. Easy to lose discs under the fall leaves.
3. Shorter than your average course.
4. For the course, the tone poles fit. They make it more challenging. But still, baskets are better.

The Outback is probably the most unique disc golf experience I have ever had. This course really makes you think outside of the box. A lot of traditional disc golf knowledge isn't going to be terribly helpful here. This course is a supreme test of how well you know your putters/mids/and utility discs.

The course starts off innocently enough (especially if you have already played the front 9 of the normal course on site). A simple shot straight up the hill in a fairly open field, hole 1 can lull the player into thinking this is going to be an easy 9 hole trek. It isn't.

The fun starts on hole 2 which is a dead straight tunnel shot that gives ample room to make it towards the basket, but is tough on misses.

3 is a straight downhill "dogleg" left, which is a really fun and unique throw. There is certainly no way to cut this dogleg, and it is almost 90 degrees left. This short hole is definitely a 2 shotter.

4 is pretty straightforward...throw it straight, but the steep uphill angle and narrow gap keeps it interesting.

5 is probably the hardest short hole I have ever played. It seemed about 150 feet, but it is dead straight and only 5 feet wide the whole way. Off to either side are new growth trees that usually only have about a foot between them. It literally looks like jailbars, and it is darned near impossible to get out of them.

6 is a fun snap-dogleg down the hill and to the right. Nothing special, but another good test of short finesse approaches.

7 and 8 are both more straightforward holes...but again the theme is throw it very straight down a narrow path, or pay the price.

9 may be one of the prettiest holes in the area. Starting on a brick teeing ground over and above a creekbed, the hole plays down and up a steep valley to a tone pole at the top of a ridge. Really nice piece of design work.

This mini course also has nice navigation. It is clear the budget here was small, but little white signs, laid out trails lined with downed trees, and pink flags in the tree mark the way to the next hole and largely make navigation easy.

This course has some of the little things too - basket hooks on most tees, a few nice benches, and a few trash cans scattered throughout. Plus you have the 18 hole original course on site and all the other amenities throughout the park.

It was a good piece of design to have the first hole here start at the 9th tee of the original course and finish in the same spot, so if golfers want to take on this additional loop, they finish right where they started and prepared to take on the back 9 of the original course.

I was fully prepared to be disappointed in the tone poles, but I was not. They are properly sized to be roughly the size of the "strike zone" of a true basket. It really didn't take any adjusting and seemed like a make on a normal basket would have been a make on the tone poles, and misses would still be misses.

Only 9 holes. It would probably be nicer to have baskets instead of the tone poles but the course made it clear from the begining that this was target golf.

The teeing areas are a bit of a problem. A few have old tree stumps in them, but they are nicely marked with red paint. Most of the tees are marked by nice boards, but 4 and 8 are more loosely marked with signs and fallen sticks which made recognizing them slightly more difficult. 9 tee is much nicer and is in bricks, but it is very short and has a steep dropoff, and a good clean runup would have been nice on this one.

Navigation was largely very good as above but I had a hard time finding the second hole. The teebox actually seems to sit behind a bench on the nature trail which I walked past the first time.

I played this course in late fall, I could imagine it could get overgrown and quite difficult to navigate without a lot of TLC in the summer.

Unfortunately reaching this course is not easy. It is a long walk from the parking lot. It is best reached after playing the first 9 of the original course, which makes it difficult to simply show up to the park to play just The Outback.

I really had a lot of fun on this course. It is a very different experience, and for purpose of rating is very difficult because I don't really know how to compare it to other courses. I know I had a lot of fun and was presented with a very unique set of challenges that made me think about and use shots that I don't encounter often in a round.

Next time you go play Yadkin County Park, stop by The Outback. It is a fun addition to an already good disc golf facility.