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 BOULDER NEWS & VIEWS
 
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sports profile: disc golf Boulder Magazine Fall 2006 Music to Their Ears
As in traditional golf, each hole has a par, and players often carry three vaguely Frisbee-like discs that are similar in name and function to a ball golfer’s clubs: a driver, a midrange and a putter. These discs have different weights and profiles designed to effect different throws. For example, the heavier weight of the drivers gives them greater stability, allowing them to travel greater distances. But in this stress-free sport there are tees without tee times, permanent courses without exorbitant fees and, most important, the special type of fulfillment that can only come from noisily slamming a hard plastic disc into a pile of chains. For Howeedy, a recreational disc golfer who started playing seven years ago, the attraction is “a social thing. It’s easy to do it in groups of four or five. There’s usually a lot of banter and relaxation.” The fact that it doesn’t require any planning and has a low barrier to entry helps create the laid-back atmosphere. Most courses are free, and anyone with a disc (they cost around $10) can show up at any time. With this ease of use, courses can get crowded and etiquette becomes important. After playing various courses in Georgia, Oregon and Colorado, Howeedy feels that Boulder players show better than average patience and politeness. At 7 o’clock on a Wednesday night, the players at Boulder’s only public course—Harlow Platts, next to the South Boulder Recreation Center—support his claim. No one is pushy about passing ahead of groups, even though the course is packed with singles and doubles working their way through the nine holes. As a larger group of eight toss their discs all at once, laughing and mocking each other’s throws, there’s an element of levity rarely encountered on a ball-golf course. And after finding a lost disc in the bushes, with a phone number written on it, Howeedy demonstrates the courtesy he describes by grabbing his cellphone and quickly reuniting the disc with its owner.
Disc golf began its evolution in the 1950s with the invention and popularization of the Wham-O Frisbee. Frisbee owners discovered that nearby lampposts, trees and fire hydrants made excellent targets, and primitive disc golf was born. During the ’60s’, Frisbee-focused tournaments arose, with categories such as accuracy, distance, freestyle, and “golf.” However, it wasn’t until 1976 that the contemporary form of the sport emerged with the creation of the Pole Hole target, which closely resembles the metal baskets used today. The inventor, Wham-O employee “Steady” Ed Headrick, was so attached to the sport that upon his death a couple of years ago he was cremated and his ashes were incorporated into a limited run of special-edition Frisbees. He even requested that his family toss them around in his memory. Shortly after the development of the Pole Hole, the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) came into being, disc golf broke away from the Frisbee tournaments to exist in its own right, and baskets started appearing in recreational areas across the United States. There are now more than 2,000 courses worldwide. John Bird, the PDGA state coordinator for Colorado and president of the Mile High Disc Golf Club, witnessed disc golf’s transition to a formal sport firsthand while living in Fresno, Calif., during the ’70s. “Before baskets, we would use light posts, trees, garbage cans—anything that didn’t move,” he says. “We’d play really informally.” Now there are a plethora of regulation baskets to aim at, and professional disc golf tournaments abound, with A-, B- and C-tier tournaments all over Colorado between April and October. Colorado currently has more than 70 permanent courses, so when it comes to finding somewhere to play Boulder County residents have a few options. There is the nine-hole recreational course at Harlow Platts Park, but it’s relatively short, with five holes that are under 300 feet. Because of heavy traffic and a relatively compact area for the holes, you’re constantly playing next to other groups. “When they throw wide or yell ‘fore,’ you need to pay attention,” says Howeedy.
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“The city of Boulder does have that much acreage available that’s undeveloped, but it’s just getting through the process,” Bird says. As a result, a lot of players leave Boulder to find more challenging courses. Longmont’s nine-hole Loomiller course is less crowded than Harlow Platts and has more long holes and the added bonus of a pond that players must shoot around. The 22-hole, 40-plus-acre Bird’s Nest course in Arvada, off U.S. Highway 93, has plenty of open space and many holes over 400 feet in length. [For more course information visit www.pdga.com.]
Technological improvements have further exacerbated the need for larger courses. “Originally the discs were kind of like the big fat Wham-Os,” Bird explains. “Now they are heavier, the size is smaller and the profile is thinner, so aerodynamically they’re much faster and glide much farther. When I first started, very few people were throwing a disc 300 feet,” he adds. “Now beginners start at about 300 feet and top-level pros are throwing somewhere between 400 and 600 feet.” Because of this longer throwing capacity, smaller courses such as Harlow Platts require a different style of play. “When I play Harlow Platts I don’t take my drivers out. I just use my putters and midrange discs to make it more of a challenge,” says Bird. Trees and Trains and Dogs, Oh My! But there is another option for those who want fewer crowds and better obstacles. Scott, a Coal Creek resident who preferred not to give his last name, first played disc golf in the ’70s and began designing his own course on his and surrounding neighbors’ property in the early ’90s. “My buddy said you gotta play disc golf in these woods, so we started tagging the trees with surveying ribbons. We would just hit the trees that had the ribbons on them,” says Scott. He met his wife of 15 years, Diane, when she came to play on his course, and soon they were tracing the paths between the holes as many as four times a day while their two cats and two dogs trailed behind them, respectfully watching as they putted. Over the past four years, new residents and fellow disc-golf enthusiasts Brad Dickson, Will Story and Bryce Colwell have helped extend the course. Dickson at first fashioned baskets approximating regulation style out of barbed wire and rusty metal, but the group has added a new twist. Many of the holes have unique themes conjured from items such as climbing equipment, mountain bike parts, horseshoes and train spikes—for the hole bordering the tracks, of course. The neighbors now have an 18-hole course and a mini nine-hole course for putting practice, which together span four properties.
Regardless of the course—public or private, spacious or fraught with trees and disc-grabbing dogs—disc golf is rapidly catching on, growing 10 to 15 percent a year, by Bird’s estimate. There’s something special about this sport that transforms first-timers into addicts, and Howeedy concisely sums it up: “It’s all about the clang.” Deborah Elvin earned her master’s degree in English literature from CU-Boulder. She recently completed a year as Boulder Magazine’s intern and assistant editor. |
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Copyright 2006 Brock Publishing info@brockpub.com |
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