Disc Golf
 |
|
| Highest governing body | Professional Disc Golf Association |
|---|---|
| Registered players | 84492, 25127 current |
| Clubs | Yes |
| Characteristics | |
| Contact | No |
| Team members | Single competitors, doubles |
| Mixed gender | Yes, but usually in separate leagues/divisions |
| Type | Outdoor |
| Equipment | Flying disc |
Disc Golf (often referred to as frisbee golf) is a flying disc game, as well as a precision and accuracy sport, in which individual players throw a flying disc at a target. According to the Professional Disc Golf Association, "the object of the game is to traverse a course from beginning to end in the fewest number of throws of the disc." In just eight years (2000–08), the number of disc golf courses doubled. The game is played in about 40 countries around the world.
The history of disc golf is closely tied to the history of the recreational flying disc (especially as popularized by the trademarked Frisbee). The first known instance of anyone playing golf with a flying disc occurred in Bladworth, Saskatchewan, Canada in 1926. Ronald Gibson and a group of his Bladworth Elementary School buddies played a game throwing tin plates at targets such as trees and fence posts. They called the game Tin Lid Golf and played on a fairly regular basis on a disc golf course they laid out on their school grounds. However, after they grew older and went their separate ways, the game came to an end. It wasn't until the 1970s that disc golf would be reintroduced to Canadians at the Canadian Open Frisbee Championships in Toronto.
Modern disc golf started in the early 1960s, when it seems to have been invented in many places and by many people independently. Students at Rice University in Houston, Texas, for example, held tournaments with trees as targets as early as 1964, and in the early 1960s, players in Pendleton King Park in Augusta, Georgia would toss Frisbees in 50-gallon barrel trash cans designated as targets.
In 1968 Frisbee Golf was also played in Alameda Park in Santa Barbara, Ca. by teenagers in the Anacapa and Sola street areas. Gazebos, water fountains, lamp posts and trees were all part of the course. This took place for several years and an Alameda Park collectors edition disc still exists, though rare as few were made. Clifford Towne from this group went on to hold a National Time Aloft record and continues to teach the sport of Ultimate to youth in So. California's Hollywood area.
A true pioneer of the sport of Frisbee Golf is Kevin Donnelly, who, until 2011, was unknown for his accomplishment. Kevin began playing a form of Frisbee golf in 1959 called Street Frisbee Golf. In 1961, while a Recreation Leader and then Recreation Supervisor for the City of Newport Beach, California, he formulated and then began organizing Frisbee golf tournaments at nine of the city's playgrounds he supervised. This culminated in 1965 with a fully documented, Wham-O sponsored, city-wide Frisbee Golf tournament. This highly publicized tournament included hula hoops as holes, with published rules, hole lengths, pars, and penalties, prizes and, an event in which Fred Morrison, the Frisbee inventor, was in attendance. In 1967, two years after conducting the first-ever organized Frisbee Golf Tournament, Kevin, then the Coordinator of the Parks and Recreation Section at Fresno State College, California, organized and then taught the first ever college level Frisbee Golf activity course, in which George Sappenfield was registered.
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