West Winds DGC

I wanted to leave a review on DG course review, but reviews are apparently disabled right now. I'd give this course a 2 on DGCR. Pros - - Multiple teeboxes. It's always nice to have a few looks at ... show more ›

I wanted to leave a review on DG course review, but reviews are apparently disabled right now. I'd give this course a 2 on DGCR.

Pros -
- Multiple teeboxes. It's always nice to have a few looks at a hole.
- Beautiful! Because it's laid out on an old golf course, it's lovely! There are long, clear fairways, big ass houses, and well-manicured grounds.

Cons -
- The walking. None of the holes are remarkably short or long, and the course does have some elevation change. But some of the walks between holes are absurd.
- The design. I don't know what the restrictions were when they designed the course, but, at face value, the design definitely could've been better thought out. Many of the holes are the same and, frankly, too easy. I putted like garbage, but still ended the round under par with one bogie thanks to a bad bounce off the basket. (I'm good, not great.) What makes a course good for both ball golf and disc golf is similar. However, how those goals are achieved between the two sports is different. This course mimics ball golf too much.
- Unguarded baskets. In the same vein as my issue with course design, none of the baskets were guarded except by old sand traps. That certainly influenced some of my shots, but it doesn't make for very interesting disc golf. Being in a sand trap in ball golf is an annoyance or challenge to avoid. Landing in one of these is a penalty and frustrating since the disc is just lying there in ankle-high grass, possibly 10 feet from the basket. Not much of a reward for a good throw.
- Natural (grass) teeboxes. It's wild to me that a course like this doesn't have concrete boxes. Maybe they're still trying to find the right spots for the boxes (I hope), but throwing from the grass boxes wasn't great. I slipped once and was careful afterwards not to throw with too much force for fear of slipping. Given its location and function as a former ball golf course, it would be easy to pour concrete pads.
Teeboxes - There's no way the footage is correct on some of the signs. Every hole had multiple teebox categories, junior, amateur, and pro. This is maybe petty, but the colors were wrong. Red for junior (normal), blue for amateur (usually that's pro), and yellow for pro. But, what was more frustrating to me was that there weren't 3 distinct teeboxes for every hole. Sometimes yellow and blue would share, or, more frustratingly, sometimes red and blue would share. There's SO MUCH SPACE.

I know this course is new, and I was told by my buddy that it's designed to be a course to grow the sport, so presumably with newer players in mind. I think that's a great idea, but I don't totally see how this course is going to do that except that it's in the middle of a neighborhood. Any advanced player is going to get bored immediately chucking fairway drivers and mids at unguarded baskets. Any new-ish players might enjoy the thrill of the wide open fairways for awhile, but they'll bore of it, too. Any brand new players will get the wrong impression of what disc golf is. "Oh, it's ball golf with a frisbee!" And they won't get better, though they'll be able to increase the distance of their drives after awhile. But this course won't even push them to develop a forehand (or a backhand if they favor the forehand).

I wouldn't play this course again unless I had a very, very good reason to do so. Or, obviously, if it makes some changes to make the course more interesting.