Pros:
- Other than Lloyd park, which is a longer, more challenging wooded course south of the city, Baker is the best public course in Calgary. Overall a fun course, I'd definitely recommend avoiding peak times to play though, especially in the summer on really nice days.
- Concrete tee pads in good shape.
- Decent baskets, no major problems on any holes.
- Makes you throw a wide variety of shots, from wide open drives, to very tight, wooded short ace runs, to tunnel shots. Lots of places to work on flicks/rollers/thumbers etc. Front 9 is pretty much all wooded and short, whereas Back 9 is much more open and longer.
- Other than some of the bushes on the Back 9 and a couple of semi-blind tee offs, most of the course is either field or clean under-story forest, so not too bad of a course for losing discs.
- The course itself may not wow you, but there are quite a few memorable little holes. The #3 island hole is well done, as is the #4 super tight tunnel ace run.
Cons:
- Busy park, with some of the hole layouts running adjacent to paths in ways that put a long stretch of the public in play. Not the worst I've seen, but not the best either.
- Signage non-existent pretty much, make sure you have a map to play. Locals play a few alternate hole locations so sometimes can be confusing.
- You sometimes get the public having a picnic on a fairway and things like that. It's a large public city park so there are people there with no concept of disc golf you need to be careful of.
- Littering/garbage is annoying at this park. I've played most of the major Alberta city courses multiple times and Baker is consistently the worse for garbage. Disc golfers have done stuff like putting hundreds of bottle caps around the basket mounds in a pattern (some people may like that sort of thing, I see it as reflecting poorly on disc golfers from a public image perspective, especially because drinking in the park is technically illegal).
- Holes 8 & 9 are on the way back to the parking lot after you finish 18, so you get people who finish 18 then cut in on 8&9 so they can play their way back. Really jams up the course in that spot as a result sometimes.
Other Thoughts:
- Public washrooms available.
- Lots of parking, but it can fill up in the summer, when the course can be insanely busy.
- No elevation changes on the course, if that matters to you at all. Would be a good wheelchair-friendly course.