Here you can learn all about one of the world's best disc golf courses, Fox Run Meadows Disc Golf Course at Smugglers' Notch Resort, Vermont. Thanks a team at the resort dedicated to its world class disc golf courses (yes, there's a second one, too), expect Fox Run to always be in top condition. Though it's most famous for the Disc Golf Pro Tour event the Green Mountain Championship and being a host for the roving professional disc golf world championships twice, Fox Run offers layouts suitable for players at all levels of the game.
Fox Run Meadows is ranked #8 in the most recent World's Best Disc Golf Courses top 100 released annually by us here at UDisc. The rankings are based on millions of player ratings of over 16,000 disc golf courses worldwide on UDisc Courses, which is the most complete and regularly updated disc golf course directory in existence.
Read the whole post to get a full picture of Fox Run Meadows or jump to a section that interests you most in the navigation below.
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- Basics: Times in top 100, year established, designers, cost, & availability
- History
- How hard is it?
- What's it like to play?
- Three real five-star reviews
Fox Run Meadows: Basic Info
- How many times has Fox Run Meadows made the annual World's Best Disc Golf Courses top 100 since the rankings were first released in 2020?
Year 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 Top 100? - When did Fox Run Meadows open?
2015 - Who designed Fox Run Meadows?
Steve Brinster, Jeff Spring - Is Fox Run Meadows free or pay-to-play?
Pay-to-play. See its UDisc Courses entry for pricing. - When is Fox Run Meadows available to play?
Seasonally spring through fall. 8 a.m.-7 p.m. in spring and summer and 8 a.m-6 p.m. in fall. Exact opening and closing dates each year are flexible and weather-dependent.
History of Fox Run Meadows Disc Golf Course
Fox Run Meadows is one of two world-class courses at Smugglers' Notch Resort (Smuggs, familiarly), a property in Vermont's Green Mountains that offers lodging and a wide variety of outdoor recreation opportunities throughout the year. The other course is Brewster Ridge, which has been in the top 10 of the World's Best Disc Golf Courses every year since 2020. Fox Run has never been outside the top 20 in that time span, and this is its second year in a row inside the top 10.
Fox Run's first holes opened in 2013, about one year after Brewster Ridge, which is also regularly ranked among the world's top disc golf course.
The story of how Smuggs came to have elite disc golf offerings is an interesting one that involves former Smuggs employee and current Director of the Disc Golf Pro Tour Jeff Spring as well as a request from the vice president of an international hotel group. It's a tale you can learn all the details of in our feature post on Brewster Ridge Disc Golf Course.
Fox Run started as a nine-hole addition to Brewster Ridge that would allow for larger starting fields at tournaments. But Smuggs always had big dreams, and the vision for Fox Run soon grew to meet them.
"Since its conception, Smugglers' Notch Resort knew we wanted our disc golf center to be on the leading edge of the disc golf world," Smuggs' Disc Golf Director Nick Hover told us. "Building a second course on Smuggs property was the next step on our journey to one day host the World Championships of disc golf and moreover to become a worldwide-recognized disc golf destination."
Due to tournament attendance and interactions with visiting players, it became clear that Smuggs' efforts in the disc golf realm were hitting the mark. So it didn't take long for the Smuggs team to redevelop the nine-hole Fox Run into an 18-hole, championship-level track that brought a completely new disc golf experience to the resort.
"As Smuggs continued to grow, plans were developed to create a pro level course that contrasted the play and atmosphere of the existing Brewster Ridge Disc Golf Course," Hover explained. "Since Brewster features more tight and wooded fairways, the theme was a design with a longer, more open feel."
Former agricultural fields of the historical Chamberlin Farm and areas around a man-made reservoir named Bootleggers' Basin provided the ideal terrain for just that sort of layout. Spring and Steve Brinster – winner of the 2013 U.S. Disc Golf Championship – collaborated to plan a course that maximized the property's huge potential.
A new, improved, and extremely challenging 18-hole Fox Run Meadows opened in 2015. The very next year, Smuggs' Green Mountain Championship disc golf tournament was part of the inaugural season of the Disc Golf Pro Tour, and it also hosted the first-ever Disc Golf Pro Tour Championship. In 2016, the Professional Disc Golf Association announced that Smuggs would host its 2018 Professional Disc Golf World Championships. It repeated as Worlds host in 2023.
Its use in high-profile disc golf events has etched Fox Run Meadows into the minds of pro disc golf fans, and its final holes have produced many tight, memorable battles.
Importantly, though, Fox Run is more than just a course for top-level players or those who want to see how they compare to the best. Like Brewster, Fox Run has multiple tees so that players at various skill levels can enjoy the scenery, wide variety of holes, and top-level maintenance that helps make Smuggs one of the best places to play disc golf in the world.
How Hard Is Fox Run Meadows Disc Golf Course?
Fox Run Meadows offers a variety of layouts. The majority of them are suited to experienced, skilled players. Its red tees will likely appeal most to newer or more casual disc golfers. Here's how it's easiest and hardest layouts stack up in terms of distance, difficulty, and more.
| Name | Distance |
Technicality | Overall Difficulty | Par Rating | Scoring Average | |
| Easiest Layout | Red Tees | Mid-Length | Technical | Moderate | 161 | -1 |
| Hardest Layout | Gold Tees | Very Long | Highly Technical | Very Challenging | 256 | +19 |
You can find this information on all of Fox Run Meadows' layouts (with the exception of par rating) by checking out Fox Run Meadows on UDisc Courses.
To learn more about what the categories for distance, technicality, overall difficulty, and par rating mean, check out these posts:
What's It Like to Play at Fox Run Meadows Disc Golf Course?
If you want to know what it's like to play at Fox Run Meadows, there's no one better to ask than the man who's job it is to manage it. Hover gave us an in-depth overview of what to expect:
Fox Run Meadows uses the natural flow and curvature of the landscape to produce a unique, fun, and challenging play experience. Allowing for huge throws and lots of airtime while maintaining its difficulty using designated boundary lines, the open and inviting fairways can also occasionally make for breezy conditions, which can quickly increase the difficulty of this course.
Fox Run Meadows makes for the perfect companion course to Brewster Ridge, challenging a player's distance throws, accuracy, and especially patience. It's easy for errant shots to land out of bounds and quickly add strokes to your round, especially on a windy day. My advice: avoid the mistake of going too big. It's easy to look at Fox Run's fairways and think, "I can make it to the basket from here for birdie…", then griplock your disc and end up out of bounds. Shooting a par round on Fox Run Meadows is kind of like eating an elephant, take it one small bite at a time and you'll get there.Oh, and don't leave your overstable discs at home!
It's also worth noting that while Fox Run is largely open (which means amazing mountain views), there are wooded holes (and wooded sections of holes) dotted here and there throughout the layout.
Three Real Five Star Reviews of Fox Run Meadows Disc Golf Course
Three five star reviews of Fox Run Meadows Disc Golf Course from disc golfers on UDisc:
Note that the publication date of this post reflects the last time we made minor updates to it. Some information has not changed since its last major update in 2024.
