New Melle Lakes is a beautiful 18-hole disc golf course that resides on a former ball golf course turned county park. The course is one of three 18 holes overseen by the St. Charles County Park Department, and is also the youngest of the three. While the other two 18s are also strong courses, New Melle is the jewel of St. Charles County, and among the top courses in the St. Louis area.
The park's location is in New Melle, Missouri, and is about a secluded as you can get while still being considered a St. Louis area course. In terms of directions, the course is about 10 minutes from I-70, and 20 minutes from I-64. Coming from either direction will give you a fun country two-lane highway drive to New Melle, and then you'll turn for a one-minute drive down Foristell to the park. The disc golf course is located at the second entrance. Being a town of under 500, there's not a lot of food or gas options in New Melle, but each interstate junction has some restaurants or gas stations if you need those. What the park's location lacks in nearby food and gas, it more than makes up for with scenery. My 8am round at New Melle made for one of the prettier backdrops I have had while playing a round of golf, despite being played before the leaves grow back in on the trees.
In terms of park amenities, disc golf and hiking trails are the biggest features of this large 400-acre park. New Melle has 3.7 miles of paved trails that go all around the property for park goers to enjoy, as well as additional non-paved trails. Fishing is also available at numerous ponds on sight, including the 25-acre lake at the center of the park. The Landhaus at the other park entrance is available for renting for events. Future planned additions include a non-motor boat launch, a playground, a large dog park, and shelters, all of which will only make this park more popular among the local community as well as disc golfers.
Course equipment at New Melle include 2 concrete tee pads and 2 tee signs for each hole, as well as the second practice hole I've seen among my 83 course credits. The practice hole has a tee sign with distances, a concrete pad, and 2 different baskets that are great distances for shots with putters up to drivers. The view from the tee pad to the furthest practice basket is a little obstructed, so I recommend practicing putts at the shorter basket so other golfers will see you. The baskets on site are bright orange prodigy baskets that still look like they just came out of the box. The tee pads on the course are very generous in size, and include a three-foot fault line zone. I noticed in some tournament coverage that players were using the front of the pads, so I'm not sure anyone uses the pads in this way. Each tee sign includes which pad you are at, a graphic of the hole layout, pin locations and distances, which pin is in use, and the direction of the next hole. There are also several additional signs on the course that help with navigation. There also seemed to be a bench at every tee pad, a huge plus with the elevation this course has. There are a few trash cans you'll pass when you go by pathways too, so keep the park clean.
New Melle's course design offers a mix of open shots along the former ball golf greens and tighter wooded holes. The open fairway shots manage to not fee redundant, which can be a challenge to achieve when you have so many on a course; for instance, hole 5 is open and downhill, while hole 6 is a shot across more of a valley that ends with an elevated basket on a hillside. Meanwhile, the wooded holes offer very challenging fairways to hit. Holes 2 and 11 are especially tight, and require particular lines to be hit to get a good birdie look despite the short distances. The wooded holes also have a good amount of variety in terms of whether a backhand forehand, or straight shot will serve you best, requiring a full arsenal of shots to find success.
The flow of the course overall is very nice and easy to follow; I like testing new courses by not really looking at a map ahead of time, and I found this course to be very easy to navigate. The only exception was when I went to 3's blue pad after hole 1, but hole 2 was a short walk and within site from there. The course also never intrudes on other park uses, with any tee pad and fairway near a pathway facing away from said pathway. Each hole has 3 or 4 pin placements that can make for a very different feeling round each time you play here. Hole 1, for example, ranges from 245' to 504' from the red tee, and also varies in how guarded each pin is with the tree line. This also isn't even the highest variance from short to long pins on the course.
Elevation changes compliment the mix of open and wooded holes to make for 18 mostly unique-feeling holes. There's a real mix of holes that either favor RH backhands, forehands, or offer opportunities for either to be thrown, allowing for good opportunities for a variety of shot types and players dominant in either hand to have a strong round. The blue and red tees also seemed like that offered a good amount of variance from each other in terms of difficulty and variety in their placements. It didn't feel like the blue tees were just planted further behind the red tees with the same line; some offered tighter gaps off the tee, while others add significant distance to the hole they are on.
In terms of course difficulty, this is a course that's accessible to a fairly large range of players. The red tees will make for a fun and challenging round for players ranging from fairly new to more seasoned intermediate-advanced players. The blue tees will offer more challenging rounds for intermediate to advanced players. Newer players should go into a round at New Melle knowing that there are some more challenging or riskier shots on this course, especially with the water carries on 3 and 12.
As for course highlights, 3 and 12 come to mind with the water carries. Hole 3 will punish you if you hit a tree by the water (trust me). Hole 12 offers some nice risk-reward, especially from the red tee, in that you can decide how much you want to try to bite off with your drive. Hole 1 is a beautiful relatively open downhill shot to start your round but has a tree line on the left to be careful of. Hole 15's elevated pin on a rock pile is one of the cooler pins I have seen on any course so far, and makes for a fun challenge with its height. Lastly, Hole 17 makes for a fun downhill fairway and includes 3 pin placements that use former ball golf bunkers. The hill continues past the last pin, making any drive and approach treacherous.