Day 2371
Nice calm, 55-60 degree day in February so we finally decided to try out the new course at Devou.
Since the time it was installed last year the baskets have been vandalized twice . . . they are clearly banged up and damaged but definitely playable. Good job by the park department salvaging them.
Every hole was interesting. The land was used pretty well considering it is a very urban park with tons of walkers and lots of roads and paths. It is definitely one of the hilliest courses in the area -- we were calling it Mt. Devou by the end. The teepads are nice, the baskets were damaged but sufficient. Hole distances and fairways were reasonable considering the land available (some would be hellish for players with poor control). It still is rough in spots and could use some steps here and there and some more course maintenance and some helpful navigation signage, but I assume those things will continue to improve. Oh, and the tee signs were great -- good diagrams, nice elevation change info, clean designs.
I'm really glad we threw it during winter because I think it would be a lot worse trying to find discs and see lines in the summer. I'm even happier it was dry because I think it would be a slippery mess when wet.
Mostly it was a really good course although I had a hard time enjoying it because of two things: (1) it's urban and I just don't like to throw crowded multi-use courses and (2) the flow of the course (because of the park) is very awkward. Lots of walking between a bunch of holes and it just didn't seem to flow. Maybe I'd feel different about the flow after playing it a few times.
Which isn't an indictment of the design, just the nature of the park. It's another fun option to throw locally and I'm sure we'll go back, but it was a little too choppy and a little too hilly on some greens. It really felt like there were a lot of holes where the right play was to lay it up on the greens and there were several cool holes where I just threw short control shots because the risk-reward didn't make any sense to go for it (Holes 12 and 18 come to mind).
Who knows, maybe we'll grow to love it? I can't believe they managed to get a course installed at Devou with the heavy use of the park by other users. It's a contention of mine that the future of disc golf is in single use, dedicated properties for disc golf. Multi-use properties tend to end up with design compromises and conflict between users and safety issues. But that doesn't mean such courses shouldn't exist, just that it isn't an ideal situation. But it's very impressive that this course was installed and it was done very nicely.
Anyway, our throwing was fine. I managed par for the course which I thought was pretty good for the first time through especially since I had little idea where some of the baskets were from the tee. Danny got to a point where he threw most of the holes standstill with a putter just to put it in the fairways and then figure out where to go from there. Sometimes he just likes to throw putters a lot and today was one of those days.
Couple pics:
Note to Danny: Woohoo! Week 1 of fantasy is over and we are in 2nd place out of 27 with 933 points!
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