Pros:
To start things off. Take this review for what it is. It's a review of a very new, rough around the edges course. I'm going to go with a 3 for the time being. It's good. Lets start with the baskets. 18 red Chainstar Pros here. Excellent baskets, some of my personal favorites. All are installed level and are in fantastic shape. They catch great and are nice and easy to spot. Love these. There appears to be 2 pin positions on every hole If I remember correctly. If not all, then most do. The tees are either gravel or natural. Shorts and longs on every hole except one (15 I think). These are all pretty solid for the most part for the distances required on most holes. For what it's worth we played from the shorts, but the majority of longs to shorts are only 15 to 30 feet back from the shorts, maybe a bit skewed left or right. The shorts have 2 blue painted stakes and the longs have orange painted stakes serving as the front corners of the box. The tee signs currently are temporary, laminated hand drawn signs. They have a hand drawn map of the hole. These show both the long and short tee locations as well as the 2 pin locations. They also have the distances from long tee to pin a and short tee to pin b and vice versa. Fine for now. There are also a bunch of next hole arrows throughout. More than enough for hole 6, 5 of them I believe. But this really helps with navigation, especially from holes 5 through 10 in the pine grove section. The first 2 holes start out Idlewild style. Tight, and wooded. Don't worry. It gets better from there. Holes 3 and 4 open up as does the wind too. Then it gets into a bunch of short but technical holes in a pine grove. Then back into the openish for the final 6 or so. Nothing is wide open though. The elevation here is more on the minor side, but it is not flat by any means. The last few holes offer some decent variations in elevation. Hole 5 is in this section too. More prairie style, but with actual trees. There is a good mix of shots required to score well here, or at least have a chance to. I threw sidearms today. I don't when I can but I had to.
Cons:
As I mentioned above, This course is still very, very raw. So take these cons with a grain of salt. The tee pads have a ways to go. While the gravel pads aren't the worst I've seen, they aren't the best either. Hole 13's I believe was framed in gravel which was nice. Not sure if this is the direction they're headed but it was well done. This was the only one of these. Now my main con would be the tee signs. Now, again, I understand that this is a new course but these are mostly useless less than a year after installation. The signs are pretty much illegible at this point. The positive is that you can see/figure out where the basket is pretty easily on basically every hole.
Other Thoughts:
I think in a couple years this is really going to be a pretty excellent course. I personally already kind of like this better than Adelaide Park. But that is more just my personal preference for more wooded golf, as opposed to open holes. Now, with that being said I really like the design of this course. I believe this has the potential to be a very good course. With the land they had to work with I think this is a great course. I loved it and had no navigation issues but I can see how that would be possible. Let's just call it a great start. It's not going to be Rollin Ridge. But what is. Definitely worth a stop if nearby or traveling through. Great job to whoever designed this. Keep up the good work. This more than anything is just a fun, yet tricky course to play and a GREAT addition to the area. Well done. Now let's keep it going.