This is a course where the pros are really, really good and the cons are really, really bad. You can easily summarize the course with the words, short, low, and tight.
Short- There are only two holes over 300 feet (one a true pro par 4 at 560 feet.) There are 11 holes under 200 feet, including one at 120 and another at 126 feet.
Low- Only two holes are out in the open, the par 4 9th hole and the 10th hole that you actually throw 290 feet over the left field fence on the baseball diamond. I believe every other hole has a canopy that you must shoot over. If you have a problem throwing your disc too high, this course will punish punish punish. On some of the short holes I threw a driver just because I could throw it lower and/or skip it better.
Tight- I'm almost embarrassed to say that I didn't birdie either the 120 foot hole or the 126 foot hole. In fact, I didn't even get halfway to the hole on either drive. That's how tight some of these fairways are. The bonus 9 holes are particularly short and tight, but fantastic practice for driving your putters. One of my favorite holes is the longest on the bonus 9, a 358 foot dead straight drive down a 15-20 foot wide fairway with a 10 foot canopy.
As I played this course I kept thinking, "Man! What a great course!" But then I gradually realized there were an awful lot of significant negatives that keep this from being a superior course. But it is so different from the other tidewater courses, every tidewater golfer should make at least one trip out here to check it out.
To really get at the character of this course, you have to think low budget and few people. The tees are almost all dirt (except the first one, which for some bizarre reason sports a nearly useless 6'x6' cement platform.) The baskets are the worst of any course I've played, I'm not sure what they are exactly, but they're like a disccatcher sport with fewer chains, a shallower basket, and a very narrow sweet spot through the main 18 holes and some plasticky (but still nice) baskets on the new 9 holes. The signs, when present, are a laminated piece of paper stapled to a small playwood sign. There was a signboard at the beginning with boxes for scorecards, but all it had was lots of pencils and ants, and no scorecards. But this is par for the park this place is in. As near as I can tell, no one actually works there. I saw a couple of other golfers over the course of two rounds on a Friday and a Saturday, but no one actually playing soccer, playing softball, maintaining the park, or working the only building around. It feels like a very lonesome place. Even the playground equipment feels like it hasn't been touched in a generation. But at the same time, there's some outhouses, a practice basket, every thing you need to get around the course (including a big sign at the beginning to help you find the first hole), and some one has even gone to the trouble to clear out/mow the underbrush on the fairways, a not insignificant feat as you will learn the first time you miss one. So a big A+ on the maintenance of the vegetation and ground (the dirt tees are some of the best I've used-including paved ones, and leaps and bound above the dirt ones at Bennett's Creek) and a big D+ for maintenance of baskets and signs. More on that in the cons column though.
The best part about this course though, is that precision is required and rewarded. Every hole is a different shot (unfortunately, lots of anhyzer for us RHBH types) and if you miss the gaps you'll need to throw a great upshot to save par. But the holes are so short you have dreams of ace and birdie on nearly every hole. Yet when I counted them up at the end, I only threw 4 birdies out of 27 holes (and 2 out of 18 the next day). I typically throw 5-8 birdies at Bayville, Bennett's Creek, or Newport News, at least from the short tees. You can't help but think "I can do better than that" every time you miss a gap.
Another great pro of this course is that it flows very well, the next tee is always close and almost always visible from the basket, but this isn't a problem like at Bayville because there are trees to protect the next tee from the thrower on the previous one, and besides, its apparently never all that busy out here anyway.
The cool "boot camp stuff" (I think it is an old ropes course) really adds flavor to the course. On the back nine, it seems like there is one contraption on every hole. Only a couple are still functional. My wife and I had to test ourselves and see if we could climb all the way up the rope hanging from the 30 foot tower. I made it up both days with thorns one day and a rope burn the other. My wife, not to be outdone, made it up as well.
The course is also flat with great trails, so it's great for a stroller. But I don't know that it is quite so good for the kids, as you'll notice below.