Your first disc golf course...

[dreadlock86]

Ellison Park in Rochester, NY when i was in grad school. instantly hooked and easily logged a triple digit number of rounds in the 3 years i lived there. started bagging courses right before i moved to Texas and i still regret not getting around to more WNY courses before moving. that said, it was moving to an area with 50+ courses (at the time) that really instilled the bagging bug.

forgot to add, that was summer 2007 and, like Dean and wolfie, i also spent that first summer treating the sport as an activity to accompany the primary pastime of drinking and smoking at the park. as a SoCal native, i was eager to make the most of my summer in the cold north, hours from any ocean.

 

[jupiterboy]

Skylne in Dallas, but it has long since been removed.

 

[thrembo]

West Park in Joliet IL in 1979. I was already hooked on playing object golf and was happy to get a basket course nearby. Shorewood was next and then New Lenox. We were blessed with having three nearby courses in the early '80s.

 

[The Shide]

It was either Brewer Park (a pole course) or Garfield Park (a pole course) in 1975-ish, with a Wham-O FRISBEE.
And we liked it!

Liked it so much, I used to play object frolf in the woods near my home.

 

[grube.fresh]

Object golf. Manito park, Spokane Wa, 1986ish

Basket/beveled disc golf. Vista del Camino park, Scottsdale Az, 1998

 

[porkturtle]

Tinicum Park - Erwinna, PA in the late 90's. May have been throwing a Pegasus, Stingray, and an Omega - if not then, then not long after. (still have that Stingray, but alas- I lost that purple Omega at Nockamixon not long before it closed.)

 

[jskew113]

Played Bayville Park in the early 90's with my dad and a catch frisbee couple of times. Played object golf at summer camp in the late 90's.

Started playing actual rounds about a decade ago at Bennett's Creek Park in Suffolk, VA.

 

[DannyS]

Seneca Creek State Park in '95/'96 (old 18-hole layout before the redesign). My buddy came home from college in Eugene, OR and told us about disc golf. We started checking around and found out there was a course at Seneca. The first few times we played we counted the hole complete as long as you hit the basket. We figured that was good enough as no one could expect us to actually make the disc into the basket to finish the hole - LOL

 

[notapro]

I can't remember which course was the first... it was either in college in Champaign or up on the North Shore of Chicago. I'm betting I first played down in college and then some more back home. Wasn't really hooked; just something fun to do amongst all the other things. Started to take it more seriously after getting married and moving away from all my friends, just to have something to do.

Not a "nasty niner" by any means, but it might explain my propensity to play any random niner!

Lohmann Park in Urbana, IL

 

[playrecords]

Moir

Circa 2005 I had recently moved back to MN from CA when I drove past Moir Park on the south side of Minneapolis and saw people throwing frisbees at objects in the park. Was looking for an outside activity since the hiking / backpacking here is pretty lame in comparison (which is what I was into at the time). Bought a couple of discs at Air Traffic in the Mall of America (hey, I didn't know any better) and proceeded to get hooked. Started playing Highland and Kaposia which were near to me at the time.

2009 heard of a "professional" tournament and went out to watch the dudes play Kaposia at the MN Majestic. Pretty sure it was Cale, Nikko, Matty O and Feldberg playing that round, and followed them throughout the course. Found out the next round was at a place called Blue Ribbon Pines. Checked it out in the following weeks and fell in love with the place. Pretty much spent every weekend there for the following few years until I started branching out to play new to me courses...

Side note those objects at Moir are the fabled "cone" baskets

 

[Countchunkula]

Played my first round in 01 or 02 at the old Knock Knolls course in Naperville, IL. A friend's buddy had left his discs in my friend's car, so he invited me and another buddy out for a round. I had a good time, but had never seen discs for sale or another dg course and didn't think much of it.

Fast forward to 06 and my (now) wife was looking for a birthday present for her brother. She settled on getting him a few golf discs and bought a few for us so he'd have someone to play with. Not sure how we found out about Central Park in Oakbrook, IL, but we all caught the bug bad and played there basically every afternoon after work until dark. No beers, back then I carried my discs and gatorade in a plastic bag from the convenience store. We knew all the good smoke spots though.

Probably the next summer, I started looking for other courses and found the local club's website. They had a map of all the courses in the Chicago area and my bagging adventure began. In 09, I was planning a trip somewhere and was trying to find a better resource than the pdga directory when I stumbled across dgcr.

 

[nothinbuttree]

First disc golf course: Calvert Road Park, probably early 1980s. I was playing other sports, so disc golf was a once a year thing for the next two decades.

First Frisbee golf course: neighborhood pool object course, circa 1971. We played constantly.

Calvert was my first course too, 1989ish. Craig Gangloff was course pro at the time. Great guy. He had just shot a 39 when we met him.

Played with Wham-O 133s the first 2 rounds then we saw someone plopping bricks in from 25' and discovered the Aviar putter.

Played til 92, won one AM 2 event in that time, then basically didn't play for about 25 years.

First round back playing, putted my old Roc on a 25'er. I made the putt but when I retrieved it, the disc had split nearly in half from age.

Have bought a 'few' new discs since then.

 

[Monocacy]

Calvert was my first course too, 1989ish. Craig Gangloff was course pro at the time. Great guy. He had just shot a 39 when we met him.

Craig is an impressive player, no doubt. I have not seen him playing the past few years, sadly.

Played with Wham-O 133s the first 2 rounds then we saw someone plopping bricks in from 25' and discovered the Aviar putter.

Yes I started playing with Wham-O 165s, but Aviar was the first disc golf disc I ever saw. Since we were used to lids, the Aviar seemed crazy overstable.

This feels kinda like trying to explain life before the internet.

 

[InnocentCrook]

My first was Idlewild's nearby little brother, Boone Woods Park.

I had seen the baskets in the park for years growing up since I played Knothole Baseball there frequently and my mom would take us to the playground and old fort they had in the back of the park. (That old fort was AWESOME for kids of my era. You could go in, up to the 2nd floor watchtowers and catwalk, and even through a tunnel underground that took you out the side.)

When I got into junior year, a friend from my knothole baseball days invited me out for a round. Fell in love right from the jump, bought an Innova starter set and the rest is history. I played Boone Woods and only Boone Woods for a solid year before venturing out to other N.Ky courses.

 

[Getty]

Clyde Fant in Shreveport, LA was my first permanent course I played. The targets were culverts at the time. There was usually garbage in them to make it really special when you were putting out.

 

[ThrowBot]

Wakanda Park in Menomonie, WI.

Nowadays, whenever I mention that course someone invariably shouts "Wakanda Forever!" Because I guess everyone is a big super hero movie nerd now. But to me, Wakanda will always be a folf field first, and coincidentally share the name with a fictional location in the Marvel universe.

 

[jeffmonty]

I don't remember for sure which one of these two were my first basket course, but it would have been either the original Edora Park course in Ft Collins, CO, or the original Johnny Roberts course in Arvada, CO. They've both gone through pretty extensive re-designs since then, 1996. Both had serious pedestrian safety concerns.

Courses were few and far between back then.

 

[glassila]

My first was the Lake Linden course in 2011 which was originally a 9 and added 9 more holes a couple years later.
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/course.php?id=4630
The course was so boring I said to myself, "I can do better than this" and ended up designing and building the Calumet Lake course.
https://www.dgcoursereview.com/course.php?id=7661

 

[danhyzer]

I found out about Disc Golf by reading periodicals at the library. After reading the Disc Sports magazine. I was immediately hooked!!! Next day I called up their number and they told me where to find my first course, Waterworks Park Canton, Ohio in 1988. (which we moved a few years later to Spiker Park that made an 18-hole course of Arboretum-Spiker Park.). Nice thing about the Waterworks course was the first 3 holes we're across a creek. So, you could warm up playing the first 3 holes until you we're ready to proceed with the rest of the course. the bad thing about the course was one of the baskets was right next to the basketball courts in an urban park. So, everyone was happy when we moved that course up to Spiker Park.

 

[BillFleming]

My wife and I live in Arizona. At the time I got started playing disc golf, we lived in Prescott area and had a condo in Scottsdale since I had to go into the Phoenix office part time, the rest was work from home. So I would leave home after dinner on Monday, stay in the condo, work in the office Tuesday, and drive back home. One day, we were both at the condo for a weekend and took a walk at Vista Del Camino in Scottsdale (Home of the Shelly Sharpe and Memorial). My wife asked what those metal baskets were for....I said "Frisbee golf, but no one really plays that anymore". This was Jan 2019. In my behalf, we rarely saw anyone playing the course. But then it happened, we walked the park on a Friday and the course was jam packed! Turned out it was the Shelly Sharpe tournament. Now being a ball golfer at the time, I knew to not disturb players when they are throwing. But there was a group waiting on a tee pad for the fairway to get clear. So I started a conversation with them and found it was the Shelly Sharpe tourney and one player suggested I go to Spinners On the Green (host of the two tournaments) and get a used putter and midrange (I wish he had suggested a starter pack, but can't go back in time). I did that and found there was a course in Prescott (Watson Lake Disc Golf Course). Went up there and ended up meeting the folks from the Prescott Disc Golf Club and joined them. Been hooked since.

If it weren't for just happening to take a walk the day of that tournament, I may never have realized how huge the sport is and may still be playing ball golf.