Pros:
City Lake is a decent, beginner-friendly nine-hole course. Come for the disc golf, stay for the scenery.
- This is your average, small park nine-hole course. It's clearly aimed for casual players, with no hole longer than 254 feet.
- For the lack of length, there's a decent amount of variety here. #1 has a crazy tree protecting the basket, with players being forced to go over or under large branch. Or you just throw around the tree altogether. It'll appear challenging for newbies, but is an easy two for more experienced players. After that, holes #2 - 4 remain in the woods, 5 - 7 are all open holes, and 8 & 9 are open tee shots to baskets on the edge of the woods.
- Relatively easy course to navigate. Tees are dirt, surrounded by wood frames. The transitions from #3 basket to #4 tee, and #4 basket to #5 tee were the only two that took more than two seconds to locate. An interesting feature of the open holes #5 - 7, is that there is a different type (and color) of grass to indicate the fairways and the transition between holes.
- This is a good place to bring extra discs to practice throwing. There's plenty of room to throw drives in the open field.
- This is a great, small town park overall. The feature of the park is the lake (more like a really large pond) itself. There's also a playground, picnic shelters, walking and biking trails. I was kind of surprised how empty the park was.
- There's a ton of extra, unused land, both wooded and open space. Makes you think something could be used in that area.
Cons:
There are only a couple small problems with the course. It actually does a good job of achieving the goal of being a beginner, family-friendly course.
- #2 seems to have an awfully high 'lost disc' factor for a beginner course. There's a tree in front of the tee, so you're having to go around it. If you go to the right, you're throwing over the edge of water. Even if you go to the left, there are enough trees that a person could easily hit one, and have their disc ricochet into the water. You don't want the casual, one or two disc players losing one on the second hole.
- The layout on #4 is poor, mainly the lack of a true fairway. There are enough options, but none that will get the average player within sniffing distance of the basket.
- The only truly poor hole is #7. It's a short, straight, wide-open hole. It's the only hole on the course with no obstacle or real challenge.
- There aren't any tee signs, just hole numbers at each tee. Not that they are needed, seeing how each hole is visible from the tee.
- It seems this park has a lot of unused land. You drive past a lot of land before getting to the usable part of the park. It makes you wonder if something could be built in the rest of the park.
Other Thoughts:
If a short, beginner course can exceed expectations, City Lake Park did it for me. For a course that was built as part of a high school project, it's a pretty good job.
- This course offers a little bit of everything: wooded & open holes, doglegs, elevation, water and even a raised basket. It should give first timers a good taste of the variety of holes they'll see on other disc golf courses.
- For a wide open hole, #6 is actually decent. It's an uphill, 227 foot shot, so it plays closer to the 275 - 300 foot range. For more advanced players, this is the type of course you'll only need to carry a disc, two or three, instead of your whole bag. That said, because of this hole, you'll need to make sure one of those discs is something you can throw further.
- There are some great scenic views here. After finishing #6, turn around and enjoy the downhill view of the lake, and the trees around it. I bet this is an amazing view in the fall as the leaves are changing colors. It's a poor man's version of the view you get at Walnut Creek in Charlottesville, VA and Lake's Edge in Reidsville. Not as good as those, but still quite impressive nonetheless.
- I've hinted at this in both my pros and cons, so it's time to address it. This could actually be a great place for an 18-hole course. Now, I don't know anything about it, so perhaps a local will correct me, and I'll update my review at that point. There's a ton of open land as you enter the park, and there's a bunch of wooded/hilly land to the right of #5 & 6 and 8 & 9. With all that good, unused land just sitting there, why not build another disc golf course? Keep the beginner nine hole loop, and add another challenging, advanced course to compliment Fox Chase. As I said, this is a great, well-kept local park, but when I played on a Sunday afternoon, it was virtually deserted. Why have all of that space, and all those resources go to waste?
- If you're going to Albemarle to play disc golf, you're going to Fox Chase. This might be a good course to visit as a warm-up or cool-down round. Other than that, if you don't live close by, or aren't planning on going fishing in the lake, there's no need to drive out of your way here.