summary
Gage Benson, the course pro and groundskeeper of Maple Hill Disc Golf, shares his journey in disc golf and his current role at Maple Hill. He started playing disc golf in 2010 and became a regular at Maple Hill by 2012. He eventually joined the staff and now teaches lessons, designs new holes, and maintains the course. Gage has found success in teaching disc golf lessons and has built a strong clientele base. He plans to continue coaching and competing in team challenges. Gage gives shoutouts to the Maple Hill crew and everyone who has helped him along the way.
keywords
disc golf, Maple Hill, Gage Benson, course pro, groundskeeper, journey, teaching, coaching, designing, team challenges
takeaways
Gage Benson started playing disc golf in 2010 and became a regular at Maple Hill by 2012. He now works as the course pro and groundskeeper at Maple Hill, teaching lessons, designing new holes, and maintaining the course. Gage has found success in teaching disc golf lessons and plans to continue coaching and growing his business. He enjoys competing in team challenges and values the camaraderie and teamwork. Gage gives shoutouts to the Maple Hill crew and everyone who has supported him throughout his disc golf journey.
We are the podcast that covers disc golf news and growth in about ten minutes. And on the weekends, we cover the future of our sport with interviews with movers and shakers as well as the history of our sport as we recap the formation of the Disc Golf Pro Tour with the people that made it happen.
Music: Strange Bop by contreloup
(upbeat music) - What is up everyone? How are we doing? We are back with this golf. Zayli! I am here with Gage Benson. He is the course pro. The groundskeeper of Maple Hill. This golf, the former number one course in the world. Number one course in the United States still though. Gage, how are we doing? - Doing well, how you doing? - I am doing excellent. So, tell us Gage, your start in this golf. How did you start and just tell us your journey until where you're at now? - That's a lot, but I can definitely tell you where it started. I can tell you the first time I ever played this golf was my senior year in high school. So, this is springtime 2010. It was senior skip day and my friends brought me to Buffaloville to play the Buffalo nine mini nine, which I'm not sure if it's still in. I don't think it is anymore. And after two holes, I hope it's up. - I said it isn't, unfortunately, very sad. - Yeah, very sad. So, long story short, I played like two, three holes and I couldn't get the disc to fly straight or flat. It was just going up in the air. So, I kind of like didn't really touch it again until summertime of 2011. So, a little over a year later. Well, I met some new friends who played disc golf. They had mentioned disc golf and asked me if I wanted to join and being it's something that I had. You're reconnecting. We're still good? Sorry, you're gonna have to edit this out, but. - Yeah, yeah, yeah, keep going. Yeah, no worries. - Well, I mean, it's so much to tell, but I mean, I said 2010, I first found out about it, first played a couple of times. 2011 is when I kind of got into it and I was saved by 2012. The vibrant moment in 2012 after that weekend was the moment where I was like, this is what I'm gonna do right here. I didn't know what, I mean, at the time, I think I had aspirations of being a pro. I never had dreams of like being on tour 'cause back then it wasn't very livable. You know, you couldn't, being on tour wasn't a thing that like, unless you liked the top five and even those guys were struggling. So, I mean, my goal was just to make it in disc golf one way or the other and I just was considering myself like a disc golf entrepreneur. And that's kind of where I went from there, man, just passion. You want more? - Here we go. - Growing up in 2011. - No, yeah, well, oh yeah, yeah, yeah. Keep giving us your timeline. - I mean, so, it was 2012, so after I'm open, I was like, I was already basically like a vocal at Maple Hill at this point. I went there all the time. I volunteered weed whacking and stuff like that. Helping out at the tournament, but I mean, it was very minimum things that I needed to help out on because first of all, like a third of the field was like regional or local pros playing. Also, there was only like 80 spectators, so there wasn't much to manage or operate. It was more of like a party. Man. Yeah, I mean, and then that was basically my favorite time of year, every year for since 2012, I basically, you know? So, what year are we in now? God, I haven't done an interview in a while. I'm sorry, Ben. Let's see here. 2016. - It's all good, we're great. - All right, all right, all right, let's do it, all right. All right, so here's what it is. 2012 to 2016, I was at Maple Hill all the time. All the time, at the end of 2015, the manager at the time was Dave Jackson. At the end of 2015, he basically just started letting me play for free because I had paid so many one day passes that I could have bought a membership like multiple times over it for whatever reason that year. Nothing bought a membership, so he just started letting me play for free. And then by 2016, springtime, they hired me and gave me a job. And I was just basically 10, 15 hours a week, weed-wracking. But man, I was the best weed-wracking there possibly could. I pushed so much passion into the weed-wracking back in the day, man. I took so much pride in everything that I did there. And then as the years passed, my responsibilities became more and what I contributed to Maple Hill became bigger and more in time and effort. And yeah, what year are we in now, 2024? So I mean, from 2016 to 2024, it's been like a blur, but here I am. - So take us through kind of what your job is now for, - For Maple Hill. - What are you? - Exactly. - So each week, I kind of go over like, how many lessons do I have and what lessons do I have? Typically, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, 10 a.m., 11 a.m., so I might plan stuff that I need done on the course around those lessons, such as like designing new holes like hole nine, the par four last year, and then the par five extension this year. So like, in organized, if I knew like a big tree cut down by either my boss, Tom Southwick or Ryan Johnson, I'll organize my lessons or time with them around that. And also, if I'm not teaching lessons, I'm building and designing new holes on the course while every day maintaining, you know, grass cutting, weed whack and stuff like that. Run the cosmic leagues and by run, I mean, I'm just the starter, the guy that tells everybody the rules that nobody listens to every first Friday a month and yeah, stuff like that. - And talk to us more about your designing. Is this something, tell us what you've done for me to help this golf design wise. And is this something you plan on doing more? 'Cause I know you have a few more design credits under your bell and you, that you're kind of starting to... - Okay, so... - To solve that avenue. - When I started to shift my focus from, I'm going to play competitively and hopefully make it one day to course design kind of like the ambassador role of the game. That was what I thought my avenue was going to be, which was designing and stuff like that. I have designed a college course around here, a high school course that's being put in. And then the Maple Hill Diamond Layout, a majority of the... So the Maple Hill Diamond Layout was originally called FPO Gold, which I think was just a name that was thrown together, you know, for the women to play down the MVP open. It was about from open back then. So I came up with the Maple Hill Diamonds name, and then with there I adjusted and designed new holes to go with that layout to challenge the best females in the world. But I'll be honest, the lessons and teaching have kind of taken precedent over the designing. Besides Maple Hill, I don't really go looking to design courses. I'm more or less looking to build a clientele base as far as like coaching and teaching and making my avenue in the game that way. - So God, it's less so lessons, more years and more, trying to coach and, I mean, less so designing and more so, lessons and coaching. Others, talk to us more about that lesson, how you kind of got started off the ground and what you've learned over the years of teaching clients. - Okay, so I remember, I think July 14th, 2020 or 2020, about four years ago, somebody from Milk Room had asked me if I would, the owner of Milk Room asked me if I would be willing to teach somebody a lesson because they were interested in learning a disc golf lesson. And at the time, I was still kind of playing competitively, never taught a lesson or anything like that. But I always thought I had coaching traits in me, which is very weird. So, anyways, he asked me what my going rate was and I didn't know, so I just stated like, you know, 20 bucks an hour, you know. And I went and taught this guy for an hour in the field and at the end of it, he handed me $40, and said that was well worth my time that that was almost as good as like a golf lesson. Like, you know, ball golf, where he had spent tons of money in a lot of time in ball golf. And I remember I handed those two, I being handed those $220 bills and looking at them and like, oh, light bulb literally just went off my head. Dang, I was like, that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna teach, I'm gonna, I'm gonna teach lessons. So, I went home and I remember talking to my dad and we made business cards right away. So, I had the business cards going in and then I was kinda building like a resume as far as like what I was gonna tell people to promote my lessons. And I remember being one of the first ones in the one line, Massachusetts, if not New England, that charged people to teach lessons. And I remember right away being overwhelmed with how many people wanted lessons, especially for only 20 bucks an hour, you know, back then. So then I started to get up to $40 an hour and then eventually up to $60. And then I got Maple Hill involved to where Maple Hill, you know, wanted a piece of it. So then they kind of brought me in house with, you know, a raise on my salary, so on and so forth. So then I just, the first two years was on my own growing, driving to all random fields and courses all over Massachusetts to where since 2020 and the '21, early '22, I've been kind of in house at Maple Hill and growing the lesson business with Maple Hill. And from there, this year has been probably the most overwhelming year 'cause not only the amount of lessons that I'm teaching, but how far away people are coming from, you know, flying in from Puerto Rico, they want a lesson from me, flying in from the United Kingdom, they want a lesson from me. People driving up from New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, down from Maine, down from New Hampshire, down from Vermont, they want to learn from me at Maple Hill, their kids, you know, all ages. I've taught guys, I've taught a lot of people one time and I've worked with a lot of people four, five, six, seven times to where they're playing, you know, and 40 now and I've worked their way up to playing in their first tournament and stuff like that. And it's just been a lot of fun 'cause like I said, I always felt like I had coaching traits in me. It was just, I never knew what, where, when, why, how and this was, it just kind of happened all in front of my eyes and I just ran with it. - That's awesome, congratulations on growing that. Where do, do you have anything planned for the future? Any exciting things and discauferly that are, is coming up for you within the next few years? - Repeating as team challenge champions with my boy BK for the Maple Hill Diamonds. That's it, yeah, as far as playing. I mean, that's basically the only goals I have. Will I play again and compete? Absolutely, but, you know, team challenge, getting ready with my friends and winning matches is I love that more than anything. And that's team challenge is what really got me into the sport and team challenge is what's keeping me in the sport. It's what I've always enjoyed the most. There's just something about going to a match on the road with your friends and battling all sorts of like winter conditions and stuff like that to then come out on top and it means more than any tournament I've ever won on my own. Yeah, that's awesome. I mean, also, growing my business, you know, growing my name, you know, just trying to get paid, eat good food and live my life. I love that. So any last shout outs before we let you go? Well, first of all, shout out to you for having me on the Disc Golf Daily, Maple Hill, Steve Dodge, Tom Southwick, Ryan Dej, like that's the crew right there. Team Diamonds, everybody on Team Diamonds, all my friends on Team Diamonds. And honestly, anyone who helped me from 2012 all the way to 2024, there was so many people along the way that I no longer speak to or talk to, but if they're seeing this podcast, I just want to let you know, shout out to you guys, you guys know who you are, who helped me along the way, I don't forget. So shout out to them too. - Yep, shout out Will Street for sure. - Yeah, my boy, Willie. - Awesome. This has been Disc Golf Daily. If anyone wants a lesson from Gage, you go to Maple Hill's website and he'll be able to set it up. So thanks so much, Gage, for joining. We will catch y'all next Sunday. See you. - Thanks, Ben. (upbeat music) - Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment, and share. It really does help us grow. (upbeat music) [BLANK_AUDIO]
