Pros:
Stoney Hill is a private course, on an amazing varied piece of land, that offers up a design that rivals the best as far as balance and variety. Amongst all the quiet, peaceful, and secluded beauty you'll get wide open ripper holes, downhill bomber, across water holes, downhill touch shots, across hill, tight short wooded holes, long wooded holes, creek in play on multiple holes, some par4/5 holes, ace run holes, and plenty of OB.
Memorable holes galore. Let me do a quick run through of my favorites...
#18 a 500'+ bomber across hill (although it crosses #1). You must first drive through a wooded 'road' and across the t-line ROW, then some gaps through trees that you must hit in order to approach OVER an OB pit and up to a super risky elevated pin. Rollaways are common and also include rolling away into OB for another stroke. I loved the challenge and ultimate beatdown, I had approached over the pit for a shot at 3 on the safe side but uphill to that pin. I nailed the yellow band and rolled just over the edge of OB and took my 5.
#12 a great downhill tunnel touch shot needing to cross an OB road and land on a tree riddled green.
#13 a decently long sweeping RHBH anny, across a creek, to a hanging basket (hang it over the creek!)
Over the pond throws on #16 and longer on #17A.
#4 is a tightly wooded curving hole completely bordered by a creek on the right.
#10 and 11 have risky greens sloping down to a creek OB.
#14A has a cool arched tree off the tee, and #14B has a great peninsula green surrounded by creek.
#9 a touch downhill along the t-line ROW with OB along the left.
#1 to start it all off is a downhill bomber along the t-line right of way.
Water OB. A creek cuts through many of the holes and is used perfectly from every angle and direction to induce suffering and penalty strokes on RH or LH players and any type of throw. A huge pond is in play and must be thrown over without any real bailout zones on two holes. String OB lines define lots of other OB areas throughout the course.
Risky greens. I don't know if I can count them all, but many pins are perched in precarious locations, on the edge of drop-offs or creeks, on a slope, on a mound, and protected my trees or other OB. Still some wide open greens for those people who hate running at it and being punished for a miss.
A desire to replay holes, after shanking my way down the fairway on the longer ones, because I just couldn't hit what appears to be a simple landing zone for easy pars. This is an attribute to a great psychological design that messes with players heads (I like it, anyone who plays with me knows about 'psychological warfare').
The tees are outdoor carpet but worked perfectly well. Seeing as how they were outdoor carpet, I'd suggest adding another tee for lesser skill level players (and to get the wives and kids involved and not discouraged).
Cons:
Just one tee. This is one of the biggest cons I will always list. Not only as someone who travels with family (wife and young kids who could use shorter tees), but as someone who seeks more variety and balanced offerings on a course. Since only one pin is in the ground at a time (despite multiple placements) one tee lets you play only one layout. For some variety, that second tee offers another complete hole, and as many more options per tee pad as pin placements per hole. Multiple tees can greatly increase variety as far as design/layout, as well as skill variety.
Just one pin placement (although the pins are portable models I believe). Multiple placements could showcase even more of the amazing terrain and offer a good overlay of the multiple course configurations, rather than playing so different layouts (or maybe that's their intent).
Quite a bit poison ivy. I will always dock for these types of ecological problems when they are rampant, which it is not here, but especially the power line holes have a lot. Not only because the stuff is in all sorts of locations everywhere that you can walk through, land in, or set your bag in, but because I am a travelling player and it sucks to have to quarantine a set of shoes/clothes because they are full of poison plants oils, and even worse to get a rash while on vacation. We played this at the end of our vacation and must have gotten into some because we brought rashes home.
Hole 1 and 18 cross one another.
Hole 6 and 9 share a tee.
Other Thoughts:
I think the private nature, guided tour, warm weather, and worn out family members took away from my experience as a whole. I'd say we prefer our quiet and leisurely rounds, but playing with David was great in pointing out landing zone distances, and offering tips on shot selection. I left there feeling like it didn't live up to my expectations, but as I think about it and rank the course analytically, it has every bit of design elements, variety, and balance that I could ask for. One could argue that #1 isn't like a true downhill bomber ski hill type hole, but its close, and then you add in all the creek OB, across pond shots, and OB in precarious places like the killer #18, and you've got a disc golf players paradise.
I would play here again, definitely. We played the course in the midst of a roadtrip from WI to SC. It was hot, we all walked around the course as a family, my wife and I played, and despite having to constantly keep the kids from walking through the poison plants, we had a good time and did not regret playing here.
The course ranked out as a 4.2 in my spreadsheet, but it was amazingly high in the Design and Setting section that I weight the highest. Despite me rating it a 4.0, the design, balance, and offering here is an excellent course without question. You should play if you love a challenge and are anywhere near the area. Being private, some amenities were missing from that 'disc golf country club' style/feel like benches, mowed/manicured fairways, kiosk, etc. But the biggest downfall that I score on is lack of multiple tees, and second most is lack of multiple pins. Stoney was punished in my scoring for having neither. Gold/Diamond/Quartz layouts are neat and all, and something that can be done on a lesser used course, and something that will be done if you have a disc golf fanatic who owns the place, but they don't change the available variety on a specific hole like multiple tees and pins can do.
Thanks to David for playing along with us, and Chris who would have if our schedules worked out.
10/11/2011: BTW, I LOVE the design, variety, and balance at Stoney Hill. If you look at my quantitative spreadsheet, this course tied for the highest score in the 'Design' category (course design accounts for 63 of the 100 points I give). I know without a doubt I'd play here again and again and love it. I'm bumping to a 4.5 - and there are only 1 tee and 1 pin placement on each hole here.