Hole Breakdown:
Background: At the time of this review, I am a 940 rated player with 400 golf distance backhand and a weak forehand. I have played 83 different courses, located mostly in the American Southeast. I am right-handed and will write this review from such a perspective.
- I usually do a detailed hole breakdown, but with 72 possible holes, it's impossible to cover them all. There are 5 holes on this course that are really, really tough, much more so than the other 13. How you get through these holes will dictate the majority of how your round goes. I'll give a few quick tips below.
- 4: Really difficult par 4 with a lot of fairway congestion, very protected basket placements, and a tricky hyzerflip off the tee. There's a ton that can go wrong here: the hole's only saving grace is that it isn't that long.
- 6: Probably the hardest disc golf hole I've ever played. 1000+ foot dogleg right par 5 with multiple fairway chokepoints and two extremely protected baskets. The thing just seems to keep going forever. If playing long pads, you're probably taking a 7 or worse if you miss the initial gap. The only tip I have is that if you're playing longs, getting to the left after making the initial gap widens the second shot. The most important shot on this hole is the second one, because it's where you enter the chokepoint area where things narrow. Hold on tight.
- 12: Par 4 next to the river. Beautiful hole, but the right is crazy dense and the left is all OB river. Not a super long hole, but the green is very small and there just isn't a whole lot of unobstructed real estate in the fairway for you to land the disc on. Accuracy and controlling ground play is vital.
- 15: Par 5. Throw over water and past some trees to reach a landing area, then the fairway takes a weird "C" shaped turn past a very large, old tree. Past that, there's a chokepoint with a few trees to miss, but the difficulty of this hole is that the green is insanely protected. There's a ton of noise around 50-60 feet from the pin where it's just a little too long to putt. This means that you're almost certainly going to take three shots to get in the basket from the fairway, so if you fall behind on this one, your chances of catching back up are almost nil. Again, the second shot is the big one here.
- 16: This par 5 has a medium-difficulty tee shot- you have to hit a very fair gap with a flex backhand. The tough part is navigating a narrow secondary fairway with trees right down the middle of it. This fairway has also been a swamp every time I've visited, limiting runup. The tricky part is that I notice I'm often having to make off-platform throws here- forehands and backhands where I have to stretch around trees, limiting my control and power.
Other Thoughts:
- This is my favorite course I've ever played. I've played 83 courses at the time of this review, and a few of them are destination courses in their own right. The ones that stick out to me are Hobbs Farm, IDGC courses, and Blue Ribbon Pines. BRP was fun, but it only had one tee and basket option when I was there, and, let's face it, it's not on the greatest piece of land ever, so it feels gimmicky at times and overly touched by human development. IDGC courses were (hate saying "were" here, we'll see how they recover from the beetles) absolutely fantastic, but were also one-note; long, tightly-wooded courses with significant elevation change. (Which, of course, is awesome golf, but does drag after a time.) The IDGC courses could also be somewhat esoteric, accessible to only those with a higher level of skill; the average PDGA rating is apparently somewhere around 860, and I feel like hypothetical Average 860 Rated Joe would take a pretty bad beating on anything other than the Headrick short layout and MAYBE the Warner shorts. (I guess that depends on your definition of "fun".) I do think the old Jackson long layout was better than Ogeechee's long layout in terms of gameplay, but with the multiple basket options and hole variation, Ogeechee is just so much more accessible. Ogeechee compares best to Hobbs Farm, with the open/woods mix and multiple tees and baskets. Hobbs Farm definitely uses elevation better. However, I still think Ogeechee is a better course. I find both its signature and lower-tier holes to be of higher quality than their Hobbs Farm counterparts. Hobbs Farm was fantastic, but it just didn't give me the same childlike feeling of awe that I got from here and WR Jackson. This course also compares in topography and design to Statesboro-Bulloch, which I believe is the most underrated course in the state of Georgia. The Boro falls behind on being perfectly flat, high skill level needed, a middling finish (everything after 12 isn't much to write home about), and being mindlessly brutal at times.
- While this course is on a generally flat piece of land, the designer did a fine job of incorporating the pieces of the property with elevation change.
- I know they have bug spray here. Please, bring bug spray anyway. You can never have enough.
- There are lots of long walks between holes, but the scenery is so fantastic that you will find yourself forgetting. A round on the golds is about a three mile walk. Course is very cart friendly.
- The layouts I played were long tee to gold and short tee to gold. I was surprised at how much easier short tees to gold were. My guess is that long tees to blue baskets is the second hardest layout.
- Be careful of snakes around the water, I saw one that looked poisonous.
- If anyone is aware of any kind of seasonality around the flooding or government resources that can be used to monitor the course's condition, let me know, and I will integrate it into this review. (Army Corps of Engineers water level or something? I don't know.) Funnily enough, I came here in February of 2023, and while the course was a bit soggy, it wasn't flooded; in February of 2024, the water holes are a mess. The best the course ever looked was when I played it in September 2022, the first time I went. I want to find a way to check the water levels BEFORE making the long drive here.
- I think 7 is the most sub-par hole on the course, and it's relatively inoffensive. The only holes where I got the "975+ rated players will birdie this every time" feeling were 7, 8, and 14. Only three holes is pretty good.
- I want to say that this would be absolutely prime for a DGPT Silver Series event, but the mercurial nature of the flooding is going to probably disqualify this course. What a shame.
- While this course is very remote, there are other courses you can package with it if making the trip here. IDGC and Statesboro-Bulloch are maybe a little over an hour away in opposite directions. I've made both these pairings, and on my visit this weekend, I paired it with the new Walter B. Williams course in Milledgeville (not a destination course, but very good!) and Claystone in Macon.
- I feel the phrase "if you know, you know" really applies to this course.
- You've got to play this one before you die.
"God bless America, and God bless the backhand turnover."