Located about 45 minutes north of Fredericksburg, Virginia is this scenic 18 hole course that will certainly test your precision!
On our trip, we were only able to play 11 of the 18 holes due to there being a weekly doubles league taking place on the front 9 that we did not want to interfere with, but we definitely got a taste of what this great course has to offer.
We played the back 9 on this course, as well as holes 8 and 9 due to an odd layout feature that initially took us by surprise.
You definitely need a bit of arm strength to play the holes that we played, but what stood out most was perhaps the extremely tight OB's!
Essentially, land on the fairway or take a penalty stroke!
We came to learn that the local disc golf club has done extensive work on this course to clean up the areas on either side of most fairways as the rough and brush is very thick and would make grabbing an errant flying disc very challenging, if not impossible.
Hence the OB.
All in all however, the course was very fun and coupled with the unseasonably warm weather, we loved playing it!
Now, let's get into this review!
The sole picture I grabbed from our round that captures how nice the fairways were
and the trees were in full bloom during our spring outing!
Course: Giles Run
Location: Lorton, Virginia
Tees: Concrete
Baskets: Mach 3
18 Holes/36 Baskets
What I liked:
Very scenic
Well groomed with extensive work to clear the thick vegetation
Several layouts and tee boxes depending on what you feel like playing that day; shorts/long/mixture/etc.
What I didn't like:
OB's were a bit excessive
Very thick brush in areas even where it had been significantly improved
Tee Boxes- 5/5
This course gets an easy 5/5 for tee boxes as all of the holes from both long and short had well maintained, concrete tee pads.
There was plenty of room for an approach and each hole had nice signage detailing the hole specifics.
Baskets- 5/5
Similar to the tees, the Mach 3 baskets were all in great shape and fully functional, as you would expect from a nice, well maintained course.
There were also several sets of baskets available to be played so you could play many combinations of tee pads to baskets to change up the difficulty and add some variety.
Navigation- 3.5/5
As we mentioned, every hole did have signage on each tee box that detailed the hole specifics, but it did not always do a great job of describing where the next hole was.
We can only speak for the back 9 but overall, the course does flow relatively nicely on the back 9, however, holes 10 and 11 are not located with the rest of the back 9 and we instead played holes 8 and 9 without even realizing it.
Had it not been for the locals to guide us in the right direction, we would have had no clue as to where we were supposed to be playing holes 10 and 11.
The easy fix, at least in our opinion, would be to simply renumber holes 8 and 9 to 10 and 11 and the problem would largely be solved.
Otherwise, the front and back 9 are separated by a little bit of distance that would be easier to drive than to walk, but the course plays nicely outside of the middle holes.
Difficulty- 4/5
The course is plenty challenging with a combination of small elevation changes, lengthy holes, and your typical hole layouts seen on most disc golf courses.
The real difficulty however lies within the extremely tight OB's.
Essentially, on many of the holes if your disc does not land on the fairway, you are going to be considered OB and will take a penalty stroke.
While this does make the course challenging and requires an extreme amount of precision, it also takes away an important piece of many disc golfers game, the Scramble.
In the course's defense, the areas off the fairway in many locations would be extremely unplayable and downright nasty to try and pull a rogue disc from during a round of disc golf, so the OB makes sense.
But in other areas, the OB is simply the difference between mowed down brush, and grass. Which does not make a lot of sense.
After talking to some of the local players, it seems that the local disc golf club has done extensive work to improve the thick brush situation and make the course more playable, so perhaps they will expand the OB boundaries in the near future.
Appearance- 4.5/5
Outside of the extremely thick brush mentioned in the section above, the course really is well taken care of. The grass was well groomed, the tees and baskets were all in great condition, and the fairways were mowed down and well groomed.
In addition to all of this, the OB's and hazards were all clearly marked when we played with both flags and painted lines, so there was no guessing as to what was in play and what was not.
Overall- 4.4/5
Overall, we really enjoyed playing this course and were disappointed to only get the chance to play the back 9.
We did play on a Friday with beautiful weather, a doubles league in progress, and the day before a tournament but there were local players every where! Which is a real testament to how good this course is, despite its challenges.
With several playing options and having the ability to mix up what combination of tees and baskets you're playing, you'll never get bored playing this course, even if you were to everyday.
The biggest knock for us is the out of bounds issues and losing the ability to scramble, but the precision required to throw a low scoring round definitely made up for this and forced us to get out of our comfort zone and play the course in a way we weren't necessarily used to.
In the end, this is a course we would not hesitate to play again and hope to check out the front half out at some point in the near future!
So check it out!
Played this course before? Let us know what you thought of it in the comments!
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