Rolling Pines Disc Golf Course Review

North Wilkesboro, North Carolina

Score: 82.2/90

Elevation Score: 3.5/10

Basket Type: King Pin by Disc King (PDGA Approved) 

Tees: Concrete 

Availability: Most of the year, closed 3 weeks per year. The week prior, the week of, and the week after Merlefest. 

Playability after Rain? YES!! See the Maintenance section! 

Tee Pads:

Score: 9.7/10

Right away you can see all the effort that has gone into this course just by looking at the tee pads. First of all, there are three tees for every hole, although there are a couple of red ones still being poured. Second of all, the concrete tee pads are a good length and width for even my long run up, which consists of two steps into the X-step! Third, they are dyed concrete! Yes, that's right DYED! Not painted! The care that went into making these tee pads is on another level. Literally, they’re all perfectly level! No running up and down a hill on these tee pads! They are also all in great condition with numbers engraved into the Gold and White Tees! The three sets of tees are called Gold, White, and Red where Red is the easiest layout and Gold is the most difficult. Based on all of this the score I’m giving Rolling Pines is a 9.7 out of 10! This is because not all of the Red tees are playable at the moment. There are a couple that have not yet been poured and are just a box with gravel and a metal grate on the bottom. Once these are poured, the score would definitely be a 10/10! Rolling Pines is a course that others should follow if they also want to have top tier tee pads! 

Brush: 

Score: 8/10

Personally, I found the fairways to be very fair and I didn’t land in any brush. However, if you were to get off the fairways there was a pretty large amount of brush, there just wasn’t any in the intended layout of the course. It is possible the border of the property is played as OB (Out of Bounds) in tournaments, in which case I would say there was hardly any brush to worry about. There are a couple holes where there is some growth, Gold Tee on 15, green of 11, and the one “wooded” hole of 13. But even then I didn’t find the brush to get in the way at all. The only other hole that it bothered me some was hole 12, which again might play as OB. It is fairly easy to get off the fairway on this hole if you do not hit your intended line. And if you get into the brush on the sides it is not fun and requires a pitch out onto  the fairway. But the brush that I was in was not thorny or any type of poison oak or ivy. So, it was relatively harmless. Due to all of this, I am going to give this course an 8 out of 10 for brush. Mainly because depending on how far off the intended fairways you land you will likely have some difficulty scrambling, especially in the summer which is when I played it, and you might also have trouble finding your disc. It is possible during the fall and winter that the brush is not an issue there at all! 

Fairways:

Score: 10/10

The fairways are extremely fair! It plays through some large pine trees that have a very high canopy. However, the fairways are a good size, not too large or too small. The trees provide some difficulty and interest to the course, but they are fairly easy to avoid. None of the fairways overlap either which is definitely a necessity if tournaments get played here. There was one tee that came somewhat close to another’s fairway and they had a huge built up wooden wall to help guard the tee from any potential danger from an errant shot! Major props for that! It is also easy to find the next tee because you don’t have to walk a super long way between holes. For all of these reasons I am going to give this category a 10/10! Each tee position has a pretty obvious fairway and none of the fairways cross which means there isn’t any danger to players! 

Hole 7 Gold Tee and it's protective barrier.

Signage: 

Score: 9/10

One thing that really separates a good course from a great course are the signs on the course. Rolling Pines is an excellent example of great signage! They have tee signs, arrows on the baskets showing the next direction and a course map at the beginning of the course! First I’ll talk about the tee signs. Some of them are better than others, see image below. They all tell the distance from the tee to the pin, but only the Gold and White tees have signs. And while the signs are very well built (they even have bag holders on them!) they don’t tell all the information I would like in a tee sign. Only the signs at the Gold tee’s show the hole layout. I am not quite sure why they didn't just print the same sign and change the distances for the other layout, but the white tees only show the hole number, the par, and the distance in feet. The Gold signs show the hole layout, par, distance in feet, and it also gives some information about the nearby town. Although, I did appreciate it that there were course maps entered into UDisc. I will also say, I think it’s very cute that each hole has its own name! Some of the hole names are “The Southside Shadows”, “Dam it!”, “Mounds of Mayhem”, and “The Downtown Dangler”, most of which are named after other things to do and see in Wilkesboro! Because not all the tees have signs and only the Gold signs are detailed to the course layout, I am going to give Rolling Pines a 9 out of 10 for their signage. Mainly because the course does have great signs pointing you in the right direction of the next tee and the UDisc maps can help you get around and show you the hole layout. 

Hole 3's Gold Tee and Sign.

Hole 3's White Tee Sign.

Course Design: 

Score: 8.5/10

The course is very well laid out for the property! The fairways are fair and don’t cross. It is not difficult to find your way from the end of one hole to the start of the next. You also don’t have to walk a long way between each hole, which is something I personally really like. I would much rather be throwing a disc along the way than hiking to the next tee location. I also think it’s great when courses loop back to the parking lot halfway through the course for people who don’t have time to play a full 18 holes. Rolling Pines loops around close to the parking lot after 7 holes, which is better than not looping back around at all! The course designer also tried to incorporate the trees in interesting ways to make each hole have something unique about it. They did this by including mandos, tight tunnel shots (with little danger), and even a hanging basket (found on hole 6)! The only part I had some confusion over was finding my way between hole 11 and hole 12. At the pin of hole 11 you can see a tee off to the left, this turns out to be the Gold Tee for hole 15. Hole 12 is up the gravel road hill and behind the basket of hole 11. Other than this one hole, every other tee was pretty easy to find! Hole 16 has you walk around a little hill but there is a sign that points you in the right direction. The one layout I was not thrilled with was the Gold Tee position on hole 1. It starts on the other side of the parking lot, so I don’t see how it would be playable during a tournament due to the number of cars that would be in the small lot and the gazebo off to the right of the tee. 

Overall, I think this course is fun and the real highlight of the course is hole 6 with the tight tunnel and hanging basket. I think each tee has its own challenges and interests which makes it engaging to play from each set of tees. The Red layout will be great for children or those just getting started in the sport due to the short distances and low probability of running into trouble. The White layout will be good for people who have a lower arm speed and want an easy, fun course to play. The Gold layout will be for those who have a big arm and like the challenge of playing through some woods without having to worry about a ton of brush. Because of this I am going to give the course layout an 8.5 out of 10. I think there could have been some things done to add a little more interest but they did a great job with the property and it is still a super fun course to play! 

A look back on hole 6's fairway and hanging basket. 

Accommodations:

Score: 10/10

The accommodations for this course are on another level! There are portajohns located at several points on the course as well as an indoor restroom that is located near holes 9, 16 and 17! For all the ladies out there you know that this is so amazing! Another big thing is that there are quite a few holes that have recycling bins! This is so huge because I couldn’t find anywhere to recycle in the nearby town that I stayed in! This is great for keeping the course clean and helping the environment as well! There were also several normal garbage cans throughout the course. Both the garbage cans help with the upkeep of the course and will hopefully keep people from littering on the course. Also, almost every hole had a bench at the Gold and White tees! This is great for tournament back ups or everyday play, especially when you have a heavy bag! Overall, Rolling Pines is extremely impressive on how much thought and effort went into the course accommodations! Because of this I am giving them a whopping 10/10! This course is a role model for what other courses should be required to have! 

Maintenance:

Score: 9.5/10

The maintenance of a course can vary. Sometimes clubs or the town are great at the upkeep of a course and other times it’s only focused on every once and a while. When I went, the course played very well! There was not a lot of trash on the ground. I only found one can that I took to one of the recycling bins. Some of the recycling bins could have been emptied but others were fine so, it wasn’t a huge deal. All of the tee pads that were finished were in great condition! No cracks or unevenness! The past two days had rained pretty heavily and the course drained beautifully! There was one tee where at the end there was a small mud puddle, but every other tee, including the others on the same hole, were completely fine and didn’t accumulate any water! Most of the grass was cut, the only hole it was getting a little long on was hole 9 which had a pretty sizable hill sloping to the left of the fairway. All the baskets were in good condition and were all in a little box built around the basket, probably to help with keeping mud from accumulating around the basket. I found this to be a really nice feature as it made the course a little more unique! This course looks like it is well looked after and it is easy to see the care that goes into it! For this reason I am giving it a 9.5 out of 10! 

Hole 14's basket and a look back down the fairway. 

Bugs:

Score: 9.5/10

This is a category you may or may not care about, but I think it’s a good thing for players to know when they go to a new course. If you know there are a lot of bugs you might want to wear your permethrin clothes but if there aren't as many you might be okay with getting away with normal bug spray. Rolling Pines did not have many annoying bugs. I was not bombarded with gnats. I didn’t find any ticks crawling on me, and I didn't experience any chiggers! These are the bugs most people care about so I think it's always good to talk about them first. Now, as someone who is not a huge fan of spiders, I will say I saw a lot of them at this course. They were around the trash cans, on some of the signs, and even in some of the corners on the sunken tees. But this is an outdoor sport so some bugs are to be expected but I don’t usually run into this many spiders. I also came across small red bugs on hole 4 that were all over my disc. But I only saw them on this hole. Due to these findings, I am giving Rolling Pines a 9.5 out of 10 based on bugs! I don’t think they will bother most people and the bugs that annoy me the most were not apparent. Also I was not wearing any permethrin treated clothes so that makes me feel more comfortable about not worrying about ticks and chiggers for the next time I go there. 

Course Appeal:

Score: 7/10

This is always such a hard one to judge. Everyone’s opinion on this will be slightly different but I am going to try my best to give you an honest opinion on the course’s appeal. Rolling Pines really only has one “wow” hole. And that is their iconic downhill tunnel shot to a hanging basket, hole 6. And while this hole was super fun to play, is it worth a crazy long drive… probably not. If I lived within 2 hours of the course I would probably go play it a couple of times a year. That being said, it is still a super fun course! It is your average course that is great for teaching you how to hit your lines. It’s also a great beginner course, because of the natural challenges and the shorter distances! Would this be a course I would feel the need to make sure I come back to if I pass by… probably not. But that doesn’t mean that I wouldn’t play it again! I just wouldn’t plan my trip around it. There is nothing bad or wrong with the course! It’s just not a really great destination course. Now if you like hiking and mountain biking you might love to stay in Wilkesboro and play this course while you do the other things in town! So, I’m going to give Rolling Pines a 7 out of 10. Don’t get me wrong, it is a really nice course and if I’m driving by I might stop there again, but there just aren't enough “wow” holes to make me want to stop here every time I pass through North Carolina. Now if you live close by, I would definitely check this one out if you haven’t already! It’s definitely the more beginner friendly course in the area!

Hole 6's hanging basket from another viewpoint. 

Elevation: 

Score: 3.5/10

If you have trouble going up and down hills and mountains this course will be great for you! While it is not completely flat there are not a ton of hills you have to walk up and down, especially on the front half. The back half gets a little hillier but it is nothing crazy! I would probably give Rolling Pines a 3.5 out of 10 on elevation. Meaning it’s not a hard course to get around, and it’s not super hilly but there is still some elevation change. The places where you have to walk down a steep hill, they carved out a curving path to make it flat and easier to get down. And even though it had rained for the past two days, the paths were not super muddy and they were easy to navigate without any trouble. 

Extra Course Information:

Additional Points: +1

One thing you might want to know is that there is a water purification center near the back of the course, visible from hole 9. I don’t think this is a downfall to the course or anything but it is something I would like to point out. I will say the baskets take some getting used to, I’ve never seen King Pin baskets before. There are two layers of heavy chains that at first wanted to bounce all of my putts out. Once I got used to them they were fine! One thing that was very unique to this course is that there were water pumps throughout the course! I am assuming you can use these to fill up your water bottle if you need to! This is so great because it is incredibly important to hydrate yourself while you're up in the mountains due to the elevation and thinner atmosphere! Because of these water pumps, I am going to add an additional point to the overall score! 

Final Thoughts:

Here is a quick recap of how I scored each section. 

Tee pads: 9.7/10

Brush: 8/10

Fairways: 10/10

Signage: 9/10

Course Design: 8.5/10

Accommodations: 10/10

Maintenance: 9.5/10

Bugs: 9.5/10

Course Appeal: 7/10

Total Score: 82.2/90

Elevation Score: 3.5/10

Overall, I think Rolling Pines is a fantastic course! The tee pads are on another level and lets face it, we all love a hanging basket! If you are swinging through Wilkesboro you should definitely give this course a try! Did you find this review informative? Is there anything you think I left out? If so please make sure to comment down below and share this blog if you liked this article! See you in my next blog!

-Jen ♡