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Your A-List: Best Disc Golf Course
Not only is Pease Park the most visible disc golf course in the city, it is also the most popular, at least according to voters in the Your A-List poll. With 43 percent of the vote, the park that runs along Lamar Boulevard is this year’s winner for Best Disc Golf Course.
While the park is extremely popular with those who prefer their golf without collared shirts, some wonder if the park and its grass are suffering from overuse by disc golfers, as noted by Pamela LeBlanc in her Fit City column earlier this month.
[From Fit City, 03.09.09]
Today, Pease Park is the scene of the drum-circling, tie-dye-drenched annual Eeyore’s Birthday Party each spring. It’s popular with hikers, picnickers, cyclists and dog walkers. And ever since 1989, a wildly popular 18-hole disc golf course has put unique pressures on the narrow, fragile strip of parkland along North Lamar Boulevard.
On warm weekend afternoons, up to 700 disc golfers converge on Pease, criss-crossing the creek and scrambling off trail as they pitch flying discs into metal baskets. The constant activity along the environmentally sensitive creek corridor, the assessment says, exacerbates the park’s decline. Park activists point to bare ground and tree trunks damaged by errant discs.
While some Austin parks with disc golf alternate between two courses, letting one recover for part of the year while the other is in play, there’s barely enough room for one course at Pease, much less two.
Some fans of the park, including Nokes and Tina Contros, an architect who is involved with the Old Enfield Homeowners Association nearby, suggest it’s time to redesign the course or close it down. At the least, the city could charge disc golfers a greens fee to help pay for park maintenance and repair, they say.
“It’s just not the right use anymore,” Contros says.
But, as LeBlanc noted in a follow-up blog on the topic, not everyone sees the issue the same.
“If we are forced to stay off the course, people will go down there and play what is called object golf. Instead of throwing discs into the basket, you just hit the object. We can bring in our own baskets or we can use a tree or pole,” Kurt Standiford says.
Others receiving votes
- Bartholomew District Park, 21 percent
- Zilker Park, 15 percent
- Mary Moore Searight Metro Park, 11 percent
- Wells Branch Park, 6 percent
- Old Settler’s Park, 5 percent
- Circle C Ranch Metropolitan Park, 4 percent
- Texas State University campus, 3 percent
- Slaughter Creek Metro Park, 2 percent
- Our Savior Lutheran Church, < 1 percent
- Moody’s Disc Golf Course in Bastrop, < 1 percent
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By Gil
March 30, 2009 8:58 AM | Link to this
its the drought that is affecting the grass growth at Pease not the disc golfers. most or the holes run along the creek under thick coverage of trees where the grass gets little to no light which means little to no growth. There are also areas that would never be used by the public if the course wasnt there. I would argue that dog feces is a much larger problem at Pease.