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Flying Fun In The Fort

Fort Disc Golf takes off with the Indiana Summer Series Finale

By Jim Mount

Fort Wayne Reader

2014-08-16


If you've been through Schoaff or Swinney park on any given day, you may see a lot of people out on an unusual course trying to land frisbees in chain baskets…

You’ve just seen the growing phenomena of disc golf in action. Like the name suggests, disc golf is a lot like golf as we know it, but instead of trying to sink a little white ball into a hole in the ground, the object of disc golf is to fly a Frisbee — or more accurately a disc — into a chain basket suspended from a pole in the ground.

Disc Golf is one of the fastest growing sports in the country today, and on August 22, both professional and amateur disc golfers will descend on Swinney Park for the Indiana Summer Series Finale. “Indiana has a Summer Series where there's eight events” says Brian Miller, one of five members of the Fort Golf Disc Committee and a touring professional sponsored by Dynamic Discs, a disc manufacturer based in Emporia, Kansas. “Fort Wayne is number eight, the finale of the Summer Series.”

You might be surprised to learn that that disc golf is a popular sport with worldwide appeal, “Disc golf is the largest growing sport in the world; in the United States it's second to Lacrosse.” says Brian Miller president of a local disc golf club. “It's grown by leaps and bounds. 10 years ago The PDGA (Pro Disc Golf Association) had something like 30,000 members; now they have up to 70,000. Here locally we have places like Ossian calling us up and wanting to help put a course in, and the Parks Department here in town is excited about the potential for Tillman Park having a course.”

The Tillman Park course, of which Miller is the designer, is greatly anticipated. One of the more unique aspects of disc golf is that it's an outdoor sport that can be played year round. “Most of your serious club members play all year long.” Miller says.

Disc golf has actually been around for awhile. Miller traces its origins to California in the early seventies. “Back in that time they would use an object to ‘catch’ a disc so they would say 300 feet away there's a telephone pole or there's a tree and would use those objects as the ‘basket.’ It wasn't too long before two guys named Ed Hendrick and Al Pierre devised a catching basket system that would catch the discs. Once they did that it took the sport to a whole new level and it started growing more and more. Al Pierre actually had a company that he sold that would make disc golf baskets and the majority of the courses in Indiana use his baskets. These are ‘Spider’ baskets and now they are known as ‘Arachnid’ baskets.”

“Schoaff Park was the first park to build a disc golf course in Fort Wayne,” Miller continues. “Not long after that a course was built in West Swinney and for a time no new courses were built until Moser Park built one ten years ago. We've expanded now, Swinney now has two courses, one West and on the other side of the river there's East Swinney, there's an eighteen hole course there that's been around for about five years now.”

Disc leagues depend a lot on selling discs and sponsorships, but finding sponsors can sometimes be a challenge. The Fort Wayne League is non-profit — they sell discs, and are looking for sponsorship money to purchase baskets for the course and cement for the “T-Pads.” Miller says the Professional Disc Golf Association has done a lot of work to promote and improve the sport, but what’s lacking is a huge corporate sponsor along the lines of (for example) Nike. But Miller has played in tournaments sponsored by Pap Johns or Budweiser, so he’s hopeful.

Leagues consist of divisions such as 16 and under, novice, all the way up to your advanced amateur division. Then there’s Pro Division which is Pro-Open Mens and Womens and Pro-Masters.

The primary purpose of leagues, Miller says, is to help players improve. “Our leagues are based off of helping people improve their game with best-shot doubles, even at Moser it's always doubles where you're teamed up with somebody who is more experienced so you take your best shot on all 18 holes. Generally in leagues we give away a lot of prizes, a lot of discs, double points in the handicap league where they can buy bags or discs or whatever they want to do.”

“One of the main benefits for disc golf is that besides hanging out with your family and your friends,” Miller says, “most disc golf courses are free to play.” As an active member and player of Fort Disc Golf, Miller also invites the public to come out and see what disc golf is all about and to see it in action, “The Three Rivers open will have three separate divisions, all the amateurs will play on Saturday, August 23rd and all the pros will play on Sunday, August 24th. Last year we had quite a few fans walking along watching the pro. We usually have vendors and food out there and we encourage anyone to come out and watch the tournament, it's a pretty good time.”

The Pro Disc Golf Association sanctioned event will be at Swinney Park on August 22-24th.

For more information, visit the Fort Disc Golf FaceBook page, their web page at fdgc.info/ or visit the official website of disc golf at pdga.com

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