Pros:
Great location, not very busy, good signage, well-maintained tee-box areas, adequate trash cans & benches, a private bathroom, and an otherwise very nice park to explore outside of the course itself. The park was quite clean as well. Additionally, the course offers good natural challenges, some slight elevation changes, higher-than-average number of water hazards, and a thick and unforgiving rough - which is a con, but the challenge it employs is a pro (stay on the fairway, for the love of (your) god).
Cons:
As others have stated, the rough is WAY too overgrown. The course I live closest to and play most often is Estabrook in Milwaukee, and it used to bother the environmentalist in me how much the course's caretakers would thin out the rough along the edges of the fairway and along the paths between holes.
Birds Ruins made me pull a 180 and now I REALLY appreciate it. When I got to the first hole, I let a sloppy backhand anhyzer go and spent the next 75 minutes trudging through some of the thickest, wettest, most overgrown, bug-infested, tree-stump & branch-covered ground I've ever been forced to explore just to wind up never finding my disc. I re-threw, this time sidearm & much more controlled. It landed in the rough too. Not as deep as my first toss, but I still spent 40 minutes looking for that one before eventually finding it. I can't imagine how many people number 19 has frustrated with its 200+ feet of water hazard.
Basically, the main con here is that the rough really needs to be cleaned up. The course is challenging enough without players having to be paranoid about missing the fairway and being forced to search for hours to find (or NOT find) their disc; this, especially given the difficulty of the final hole.
Other Thoughts:
Again, regarding the final hole: if you know while playing the whole round that you may very well lose a disc on 19, you're going to play VERY conservative from 1-18 and it might affect your gameplay. Since #19 is the first hole you see when you park your car, it weighs heavy in your mind for the whole round.
Don't get me wrong, I was utterly intrigued and infatuated with the course as soon as I got there, parked, and noticed #19 (it's the hole nearest to the parking lot.) It's hard not to be. It's challenge is immediately apparent, and the risk involved makes you want to play it straight away just to prove to yourself that you possess the skill to conquer it.
If you're unfamiliar with the course, as soon as you park you'll walk up to the tee-box for hole 19, see the sign stating 275 ft to the hole, and then you realize that the hole is on a peninsula across 200+ feet of water hazard - it basically goes: Tee-box => 30 ft of rough => HUGE water hazard => shoreline => small-ish 20 ft radius clearing in the woods, with the basket situated dead-center.
So like I said, at least 200 ft of #19's 275 ft is water.
Also, if anyone finds a Millenium Sirius Orion LS to the far-right of the fairway of hole number 1, contact me on here and I'll buy you a six-pack of good beer - or something equivalent in price i.e <$15.. (the discs original owner wrote the same thing on the back of the disc but when I contacted him, he never followed up - so don't use his info cuz it's outdated. Just contact me here lol).
When I first arrived and was throwing at the practice basket, I couldn't believe I was the only person there (and I remained the only person playing there the whole 4-hrs I was at the course). After losing and nearly losing my 1st and 2nd throws respectively, it became apparent why, on such a mild and gorgeous day, the course was completely empty. Only the most seasoned and adept of players that can avoid the rough without expelling much effort will be comfortable playing here.
Any lapse in judgement, any dampness of the hands that compromises your grip on the disc, any slip of the foot while going through the motions of your drive, all lead to you having a bad time. This course has so much potential - it's a beautiful location, it's quiet, and with so few players, you can play at your own pace.
Plus, given that all Madison-area courses are pay-to-play, this is a great refuge for broke college kids, or those of us trying to play a round a few days before payday when money's tight.
I recommend this course, but with a bright-red, violently-waving caution flag:
-=- You should probably avoid doing what I did my first time playing here, and don't play alone: 2, 3 or more pairs of eyes will have a better chance of finding AWOL throws than you by yourself.
-=- You also may want to leave your prized or favorite discs in your trunk.
-=- And this isn't the course where you'll want to decide before starting that you're going to practice throws you're not 100% comfortable with yet, just for practice's sake.