Pros:
McDade Park is a challenging 18 hole course in Conroe in a great community park. It is a large park, but there is parking right by the beginning of the course near the amazing practice basket. It's a shorter-mounted basket in a graveled area, next to a course map and memorial. Very well done, very visible. And practice baskets are just a great touch.
Hole one starts off with a long par 4, river to the right to swallow discs that turn over too much, or get grip-locked. So really take advantage of that warm up basket.
Some of the holes are pretty long for par 3's, but some are also really short, so really I think it balances out. If a course offers as many birdie chances as it does holes where a par is a struggle, I'm ok. I like having a shot at winning a stroke back with my medium-at-best range.
The signage at this course was ok, i felt the distances were pretty accurate, and the hole markers were big stones. The tee's were good size concrete, and the baskets weren't always very visible (grey, no colored band), but they caught just fine. No maps on the tees, which could be useful on a couple holes.
In addition to the long and short variety on this course, there's a good variety of left and right too. But mainly there is a lot of just straight. At least, those are some of the holes I remember most. I don't remember what hole number they were, but the ones I remember most were just the ones where I had a great drive off the tee. But any hole has that potential, so the whole design is equally pretty great.
Cons:
As should be obvious for a course in Houston- very flat. No real change in elevation to speak of. Even on the walking paths.
Some of the holes are pretty darn tight. Especially 18. I played it as hole 2 by accident, and it is kind of awful. The pro that came out of this was that hole 16 got to be my last one, and it's a great hole, and I got the deuce to finish my round.
That area is also pretty poor navigation. If you don't know to skip the nearest hole after hole 1 to walk down the road to keep playing, you'll accidentally play 1-18-17 and look for hole 4 not realizing you haven't even played 2. The rest of the course- easy navigation. Simple and straightforward. But it starts you and ends you (with the 16 to 17 walk) on a weird note.
Watch out for water behind hole 8. You can't see it, and it's almost right behind the basket. This is one of my biggest pet-peeves, and how I lose a lot of discs.
Other Thoughts:
McDade is not a bad course to play. I really enjoyed it and hope I get to play again on a trip back to Houston. I definitely don't think it's worthy of a 3.9, or anything close to a 4 without any elevation and without a signature hole. It's a lot of just "Very Good" design, and may be about the best that could be done at this location.