Pros:
- heavily wooded course with some great technical challenge
- beautifully maintained park
- amenities: practice basket, benches, garbage cans
- Innova DISCatcher baskets in good shape
- concrete tees (a little older, but still serviceable)
- newer full color tee signs with maps
- navigation is fairly straightforward; good use of next tee indicators
- three or more pin placements per hole
- populated pin position indicated on tee sign
- woodchips around tees as needed
- added 7A - 7C holes improve the diversity of the course
- good variety of shot lengths with some very long holes
Cons:
- beginners will likely find this course frustratingly difficult
- mostly flat
- no par on tee signs
- no hole numbers on baskets
- long and somewhat unclear walk between holes 2 and 3
- hole 11 plays very close to the road
- some baskets could use woodchips to cut down on mud
Other Thoughts:
Brown Deer is another excellent Milwaukee area disc golf course, all of which seem to sport just over 18 holes (21, in this case). I came to Milwaukee expecting this heavily wooded course to be my easy favorite, but came away preferring Dretzka Park over this one. Brown Deer is an excellent course, and I think of it as about a 3.75, but overall, I think it is just a touch below Dretzka, objectively.
The highlights at Brown Deer are the tight wooded lines and high level of technical challenge. If you don't like woods golf, you will probably be frustrated here. I shot +8 with no birdies, which was still rated over 900. This is a tough course. If you like this sort of challenge, you likely will have a great time here. It is definitely a bit of a hike; elevation change is very limited, but this course is slightly above average in terms of length, and there several very long holes in the 450-600+ ft range where you will have to grip it and rip it to complement your woods game.
Holes 7A through 7C were presumably added after the fact, but what a great addition. 7A and 7B force water hazards over the pond which is another different look at this course and was a lot of fun. Baskets are mounted very close to the water line. The only downside here is these play pretty close to walking paths so you definitely need to pay attention to your surroundings. 7C plays back through the woods and is another cool hole. The only other issue here is there's a bit of a long walk from 7C back to hole 8; feels like a 7D could have been worked in here.
This is a beautiful park, and is playable for the $5 daily rate that covers all of Milwaukee's courses. This is reasonable for a single round, and if you are playing multiple courses it's a steal as pay to play goes. It seems like improvements are made over time, as holes have been added, tee signs have been updated to include better maps, etc. There are also indications some long tees may be in the works - it looked like additional tees were going in on holes 10-12.
Navigation aids were mostly great here, although the long walk between holes 2 and 3 was somewhat confusing and the walk between 7C and 8 isn't the most straightforward. Otherwise, the flow was done well here.
I definitely enjoyed my round here, and highly recommend checking out Brown Deer and Dretzka at a minimum on a trip to Milwaukee. I would not bring beginners to this course; it will be a frustrating experience if you aren't closer to an intermediate level. With that said, Milwaukee has a great sprectrum of disc golf courses for all skill levels, so there are much better options if someone is just getting in to the sport. Overall, this one is well worth checking out.