Man, I feel really old hearing all these stories where there were already real pole hole courses and specialized golf discs when people started playing. I was rarely without a disc close by in my middle teen years in the late 1970s, but was mostly playing throw-and-catch or freestyle with my high school cronies (we had an open campus, and several of us would grab something quick from the cafeteria vending machines and rush outside and freestyle on the tennis courts behind the band room for most of our lunch period).
Even then, I was incapable of being interested in something without reading everything I could find about it, and our local library had a copy of Stancil Johnson's
Frisbee: A Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise. Through that, I became familiar with the major names in the sport at the time, including Dan "Stork" Roddick, Victor Malafronte, and of course Ed Headrick. I joined the IFA, and started trying out all of the sports and games I learned about, including distance, Maximum Time Aloft, Throw-Run-Catch, etc. And of course, disc golf.
I was throwing far enough even with my noodle arm and my
Wham-O Master Frisbee and
Professional Frisbee that playing disc golf in my yard was out, so I started trekking to a local elementary school that had a huge amount of open land around it, with occasional trees, plenty of light poles, and even a small pond with a sort of island (a peninsula, technically, but more of an island with a dirt bridge to it), where I laid out a 9 hole object course that seemed reasonable to me. Looking at Google Maps, and trying to remember the layout of some of the holes, most were in the 150-300 ft range, which is surprising -- I recall thinking of at least a couple of holes as par 4s, though they couldn't have been much over 300 ft.
In college, there was an object course that played through the most heavily trafficked parts of the campus -- astounding that the administration let us get away with it as long as they did, but it was quite short -- all of the holes were 120-200 ft or so -- maybe one longer one. One involved throwing from a plateau across 100 ft or so through trees, which then sloped down 15 ft or so to a sidewalk, across that and through more trees to a flagpole in front of the campus center -- meaning that discs came sailing over the heads of people walking along that sidewalk, and right into people coming or going from the campus center. Aces weren't at all uncommon, and neither were pedestrian-disc collisions.
Playing that course nearly every day for four years really formed my game -- never had any need to develop any distance, but learned to shape shots pretty well. Still playing mostly with lids, though by then I'd added a Wham-O Moonlight Flyer "golf disc" to my collection.
Freshman year (spring 1983), I heard that there was a real disc golf course at Burns Park in North Little Rock, and that there was a tournament during our spring break. So I drove down, camped at Burns Park in a tent that turned out to be missing half its poles, in early March when the ground was still incredibly cold (I barely slept at all for shivering), and played my first tournament -- also the first time I'd ever played a course with real baskets. The tournament was run by Ted and Susie Smethers, and I also bought my first real golf discs -- a DGA Kitty Hawk Driver and Kitty Hawk Putter (the driver still has Ted's PDGA number on the bottom certifying it for tournament use). We started driving down occasionally to play, but mostly kept playing our campus course.
In the summer of 1986, I played the Arkansas State Championship, Am Division, and was leading after the first round. As I've mentioned elsewhere here, that meant I got to play the second day in a group with Steady Ed Headrick, which was a huge thrill but messed with my head so bad that I ended up finishing third or fourth.
Then I moved to Atlanta to go to grad school in August 1986, and my disc golf days basically ended for the next two decades -- the only course around Atlanta I knew of was at Chastain Park, which was nearly impossible for me to get to without a car -- likewise for Redan Park when it came along. I did get to play at Oregon Park a few times, as it was near the home of some family friends of my girlfriend, and we did head over to Wills once, but living inside the Perimeter without a car I just couldn't manage it more than a few times a year.
I did play Lenora Park a couple of times when I had an office in Snellville in 2001, but it was a long way from home, and the course was in the opposite direction from my commute, so I didn't do it much.
I finally started playing again regularly when we bought a new house across the street from East Roswell Park -- my wife picked the house, so she can't claim I did it because of the disc golf course -- didn't even realize it was there until afterward, but now that I can walk a thousand feet or so from my front door to the fourth tee, I've gotten back into it. I sort of feel like Rip Van Winkle at times -- lots of stuff happened in the sport in the 20 years I wasn't paying attention, and I always feel like I'm way behind trying to catch up.
