Disc golf obstacles usually come from trees. Tight gaps, wooded corridors, canopy to navigate — these are the tools most designers reach for. On the prairies, those tools are limited. So Willow had to find other ways to make your life difficult. The answer was topography. The coulee, the elevation breaks, the depressions in the terrain, the footing — all of it weaponised. If you're not in the right landing zone, your next shot gets harder. The prairie doesn't need trees to make you miserable. It just needs to be itself. But don’t worry over a third of this layout is in the woods where the usual torture awaits.

In ball golf, a sand trap reduces a player's ability to generate power. Willow's designers asked a simple question: what does that look like in disc golf? The answer was the purpose-built depression — an excavated low point that forces a player to throw nose-up over an obstacle from below, stripping away power and margin simultaneously. As far as anyone knows, Willow is the first course to build and integrate these features deliberately as a design element. They are not fun to be in. They are very fun to watch other people struggle to get out of.

Willow is long, and it earns every foot. Almost every hole offers split fairways — multiple lines, multiple risk/reward decisions, multiple opportunities to set yourself up perfectly or talk yourself into something catastrophic. And through all of it the course is gorgeous — every hole positioned to give you something worth looking at. A view down the river valley, a basket framed by foliage, a tee shot that opens up into something that makes you pause before you throw. We put it there so you'd have something nice to look at while the course destroys you.