Pros:
Pros (justification for "Excellent" rating):
Indian Springs 18 hole disc golf course follows most of the layout of the existing 9 hole scenic and hilly ball golf course. The disc golf course was recently improved from what was once a very long, almost monotonously so, with dual tees and baskets, to what is now a very challenging, but fair test of your disc golf skills. Given the disc golf course is on a golf course, I'm sure you can imagine there should be plenty of open, long bomb opportunities. One of my favorites, hole 6, is a long downhill shot over a meandering creak with a beautiful countryside as a backdrop to admire as your disc seemingly floats for eternity towards the basket, and hopefully, assuming you were brave and powerful enough, carried the creek and landed somewhere near the steep uphill slope the basket is perched on for a lucky 2. But where the old course required all long bombs and could literally wear you out after the front 9, the new layout now offers plenty of shorter technical shots like on hole 8 where not more than a putter is needed, but precise aim is a must to hit the narrow opening into the woods across the fairway and distance must be controlled to avoid going long into the pond just behind the basket. A great, memorable risk reward hole is number 11, a decent length but reachable par 3, but you're faced with a choice: short layup shot to a landing area with a 150+ ft. shot to save par over an old pond with thick overgrowth all around, or go for it, but risk coming up short or losing your disc in the heavy brush or water if present from a recent rain.
The flow of the course seemed very natural and unforced, though you do have to share the course with golfers so be on the lookout. You'll likely have most of the course to yourself. The few golfers we did encounter were interested in what we were doing and happy to watch as we played along them and through. It is recommended to wear long pants and bring bug spray when playing, which is pretty typical of most disc golf courses, but you are on a golf course, so expect most of the play to be on very well manicured and short grass, perfect to practice that roller or skip shot on. The baskets are homemade, and have a decently bright white finish, so spotting baskets, even nestled away in the woods wasn't difficult at all. A map is a must which is provided in the club house after paying the $5 fee to play. There are no signs, but the asphalt tee pads are easy to spot and provide plenty of traction to trust on any long shot. The humble, but functional clubhouse has restrooms to provide relief for that mid-round break if needed and looks to be a nice shelter if you just have to wait for that storm cloud to pass before continuing your round.
Cons:
Opportunities for Improvement
The new layout at Indian Springs makes it by far the most fun and challenging course in the area (in this reviewer's humble opinion), but as with all courses, there are opportunities to improve.
For one, the baskets......I've never seen any like them and imagine they were all homemade many years ago with the key clues being the heavily rusted chains and a few bent baskets; but they all caught the disc just fine. In the future, it would be great to see newer style baskets arrive, but for now, the homemade ones will do.
While the tee pads provided good grip and size, some were somewhat bumpy due to the asphalt coming up. It was an easy fix to just play from the short grass next to the tee.....after all, we were on a golf course!
There were no signs present for the disc golf course. Without the map provided, we would have been completely lost on where to go.
While the course condition was good (from a disc golf stand point), holes in the woods could definitely use some weed whacking. There was no path for instance between hole 10 and 11 which forced us to walk through knee high foliage. Just a little TLC should remove this gripe.
While the design and flow of the disc golf course is a huge improvement over the prior layout, I could see it being a challenge to disc golf on a busy day with ball golfers. Where the old layout followed the ball golf course 1:1.....1 disc golf hole per golf hole, the new layout has multiple holes on each to avoid walking the entire 9 hole layout again. This slows play a bit relative to ball golfers, so we had to keep an eye out.
The first 16 holes were truly a blast, but the last 2 were a bit underwhelming. This feedback is consistent with previous reviewers on the prior course layout, and makes sense, because for the most part, these last 2 are essentially unchanged. It would be nice to see a strong, challenging finish.
Improvements to some of these minor nags could easily bump the course to "Phenomenal status" in my opinion.
Other Thoughts:
Definitely worth the trip to play!