My wife just started playing disc golf about a month ago at the behest of a family member. She’s played a total of four rounds.
The nearest course is a nice one…it’s located about a 20 minute drive from our house and is a great launching point for learning to play.
However…we’ve noticed that the private college located no more than a five minute drive from our home has a few baskets, but nothing resembling an active course. Inquiries have been made and apparently, they used to have an 18 hole course, but they allowed it to be taken over by Mother Nature. Further inquiries have led us to the athletic department and the facilities manager, who thinks that reviving it would be a great idea, but has no money allocated to the project.
We have located roughly 10 baskets. The remainder have been lost to time. We’ve been told that if we can design a course and either get more baskets or cannibalize the existing ones for a nine hole course, they’ll render whatever assistance they can and will fully support the project. They are actively replacing the athletic turf at the soccer field now and have put the old turf aside for us to use in the tee boxes/pads.
is there any resource here for helping a rank beginner at the sport to design a course? We think we can get sponsors to chip in and get us the baskets needed to round out the 18 hole course. Although there are no existing tee boxes, we intend to avoid overcomplicating this by totally redesigning everything. But we need to figure out where to put new tee boxes, where to add baskets, and how to put together a course that players at all levels will enjoy.
Hey @cajunmtman, not an expert in course design, but wanted to refer you to the Course Building section of Release Point that has quite a few helpful articles that may help get you started.
I’m sure there’s advice that other people can offer here as well!
This is so cool to hear about. I hope that you all have success in getting this done. If there is anything UDisc can do, like provide local data for you, please reach out to us at help@udisc.com. And keep us up-to-date on how it’s all going!
The course building article Jenn posted is a solid one and hits several things that immediately came to mind. Using Udisc for stats is also superb - extremely helpful!
I would say keep the following in mind.
Who is the course for? If it is for beginners, make it for beginners. Don’t have 7 easier holes and then 2 500’ monsters. Be consistent.
Absolutely think safety first! Avoid possible interactions with roads or “busy” areas.
Play as many courses as you can and think about what you can steal/incorporate into yours. It was extremely helpful seeing what was good and not so good.
Flow is important. Try hard to have it easy to get on and off the course in regards to parking. Nobody wants to walk 9 holes only to walk the entire course backwards to the parking lot. Similarly, there needs to be an extraordinary reason to have a long walk between holes - generally of there is space for a hole discers would rather be throwing it than walking it.
Be organized and use volunteer time wisely. Have jobs and equipment prepped and ready to go. Volunteers are there to work, not stand around.
Borrowing baskets for a temporary setup both drives interest and lets you see what works and what doesn’t.
You will walk the property 20 times before you get the design right. Listen to folks, draw things out, and be prepared to change things up significantly. A good plan should be 3-4 months - it is almost ideal to do it in winter. Flags and ribbon can be helpful for visualizing things.
Remember that you are volunteering to create this project and it will take an ungodly amount of time to manifest. You will get volunteers for an hour here and an hour there. You will be committing hundreds of hours. Don’t get mad feeling like they are benefiting without putting in the work. You are the one who decided to do it - encourage what you can and nurture a community, but this will only get done if you drive it to be done.
This looks like great advice…already learning that those who thought it was a great idea are suddenly hard to reach when it’s time to actually put in the work needed to advance the objective.
Ooooh yeah, that is a thing! I would hazard if you get 20% of the ones who say they will help to actually show you are doing great. I believe most courses are put in by 1-3 highly motivated individuals and another 3-5 somewhat committed volunteers, with another dozen that will show up for light work, once, for an hour or two.
Best advice I got from one of the older highly motivated guys - “Be prepared to be sweating your butt off working on a course only to watch your friends pull into the parking lot, slowly loop through, and drive off to play somewhere else.”. Those will also be the ones who ask when the course will be done and why such and such wasn’t put in!
It’s worth it, but it is an unholy amount of work if you want a 4+ star course. Makes me really appreciate what went on to the 4.5s!
If you are in it to win it, just take your time. It’s a growth project that will take years before it is done as you add things and fix things. We are moving into year 3 of a 5 year timeline. The course is coming along beautifully, but it sure is a bitter pill to hear guys complain about how slowly teepads are being put in when they are also not showing up to lend a hand!