summary In this episode of Disc Golf Daily, Steve Dodge discusses various disc golf news articles. The main topics covered include the approval of a new disc, the relocation of a disc golf course due to industrial park expansion, the opening of a new championship-style disc golf course, and the opening of Bay City's first-ever disc golf course. Steve also mentions that future episodes may be less frequent due to the upcoming MVP Open.
keywords
disc golf, news, disc approval, disc golf course relocation, championship course, first disc golf course
takeaways
New disc approvals are announced, such as the Apple Blossom putter from Gehringer Discs. A disc golf course in Bedford County will be relocated due to industrial park expansion. Enterprise South Nature Park unveils a new championship-style disc golf course. Bay City opens its first-ever disc golf course, catering to players of all ages. Future episodes of Disc Golf Daily may be less frequent due to the MVP Open.
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
>> Hello race fans and welcome to Disc Golf Daily. We are the podcast to get you caught up with Disc Golf in about 10 minutes, saving you time and effort. It is Wednesday and that means Seamus is joining us again. Seamus, how are things in Scotland today? >> Hi Steve, thanks for the warm welcome. It's great to be back here at Disc Golf Daily. Locally I can tell you that it certainly smells a lot better than it has in the past here. Our friends in Iceland gave us a nice volcanic eruption debris for the last few days and let me tell you, it smelled like last week's egg salad just about everywhere. So we're happy to have the blue skies back, a nice southern wind. Iceland can share with our other Scandinavian friends in the future. >> Well that sounds pretty bad and what also is not necessarily bad but definitely below average, there was a total of one disc approved in the past week. It was the apple blossom, the apple blossom, easy for me to say, a new putter from Garinger discs that is PDGA proved. It joins their other disc, the cherry blossom. And outside of social media pages which don't mention the discs, I don't see much about Garinger discs. We will have to wait and see. >> Namous, what do you got for us today as far as new news? >> Thanks, the first article today that caught my attention was an article out of PDGA Europe about Elizabeth Pexenia and she's an 18 year old player from Talsy Latvia. She's the highest rated FPO player in Latvia and the article goes on to describe her play which sounds very promising but one of the things that caught my attention was that Riga capital of Latvia has 10 disc golf courses rated 4.5 by you disc. What a fantastic area to live in and we look forward to seeing things from Elizabeth if I didn't butcher her name Pexenia too badly. Back to you Steve. >> That is very intriguing. My first news article comes to us from WDBJ channel seven out of New Bedford, the headline, Bedford County to move forward with industrial park expansion, disc golf course to be relocated. We touched on this last week. Here's a little bit from the article. Phase two has been envisioned for many years to expand the business ready sites at New London said Robert Hiss, Bedford County administrator. What that entails is grading and clearing two lots for future development also extending the road and installing utilities to those graded lots. But we're a disc golf daily so what does this mean for the disc golf course? Hiss assured the course won't be eliminated but it will be relocated. They won't be eliminated said Hiss. They will be relocated to other utility easements or there's a 30 to 35 acre part of the property where most likely there will be some holes developed. The county has been planning this phase of development for years long before the disc golf course was built as part of this expansion six or seven holes of the course will be moved to make way for the new industrial lots. These holes will be relocated to other parts of the course. And then Hiss continues with our investment in disc golf. We don't want to see it go away. We don't want to see it go to waste. So again, wanting to relocate those holes and still have a professional course is a goal of ours. We've put time, money and effort into this so having it continue is important for us. Thank you, Robert Hiss. Seamus, back to you. One of the things I caught my eye this week from Brody Smith, when he was going on about talking about backups, which he's talked about before, he mentioned a few other problems with the current state of championship disc golf courses. And my feelings are that you have to stop using so much rope. If you want to solve these problems, championships need to be held at mature disc golf courses. Mature disc golf courses have had an opportunity to work through all the problems. There's no such thing as a perfect disc golf course. But you do have mature disc golf courses, which has a limited number of problems. I mean, if the idea in golf is to play the least amount of golf, then the idea for the perfect disc golf designer is to use the least amount of rules. And that'll certainly help the speed of play in certain situations. But there's a lot of ways to look at it. I don't mean to just simplify it like that. But another way you can do it is with groups of three. If the people aren't going to be on the camera, then there's no reason you can't have a group of three. That'll certainly help its be to play. I've chased card, second chase card, lead card, of course groups of four. That's what the sponsors want. That's what the cameras can, that's what the cameras are there for. Let them do it. But otherwise, if you can utilize groups of three, that'll help with backups. I do like what Brody said about officiating. I think that there should be an official under regard. One of the things that caught my eye this week, as far as complaining about things go, is Brody Smith was very vocal about time of play. And he's done this before at different tournaments. There's a couple of things that can be done to help with the speed of play. One of them is to use less rope. A lot of it goes back to the course design. And you'll find that mature courses use less rope. And they've also had time to correct the challenges of designing a disc golf course. There's no such thing as a perfect disc golf course. There's disc golf courses that flow better, some are more fun, some are more challenging. And the hard part, the art part, if you will, is combining all those three things. Making it fun to watch, fun to play, and challenging is really difficult. And it's almost impossible to do that right off the bat. You might get lucky in a few holes here and there, but to do the whole thing right off the bat, it's just not possible. So when you're dealing with a more mature course, I think you're going to have less backups, or at least there's the opportunity to have less backups. Another thing that would be helpful is groups of three. If they're not on a televised card or the chase card, groups of three will certainly move things along much faster. And having marshals on each card is important and I think it's a step that disc golf needs to take. This at least have a marshal available for every card. And I'm sure that there's a lot of volunteers and a lot of people involved. And hopefully it's the exception to the rule that you can't find a certified official or a marshal at a top level event. But moving forward, yes, definitely marshals and certified officials in every card. And to go back to course design, if the object of disc golf, or golf in general, is to play the least amount of golf, then the object for a course designer or someone who's hosting a large disc golf tournament would be to use the rule book the least, or the least number of rules in play. And by simplifying things, it just makes it run smoother. And that's my two cents on what Mr. Smith said to say. All right, thanks for that pitch back. The next article I've got from a non endemic disc golf source, the Chattanooga Times free press enterprise South Nature Park unveils new championship style disc golf course, disc golfers and this is from the article now, disc golfers and outdoor enthusiasts will have something new to check out this weekend with the grand opening Saturday of an 18 hole disc golf course at enterprise South Nature Park. The event comes two years after the decision to add the course, a project that costs $25,000. Not a bad, not a bad total. Saturday's gathering will celebrate the cooperation between Hamilton County Parks and Rec, prodigy disc golf and community volunteers. A tournament will follow the ribbon cutting. Park is superintendent Allison Har is excited that her facility can offer such a new amenity that while accommodating to sport enthusiasts of all ages is also designed at a championship level. On a side note, the course was designed by Will Schusterik, three time USDGC winner. And as the article notes was the number one disc golf player in the world in 2012. Yeah, thanks Steve. I do have one more thing to say and hopefully people appreciate it. There's no real article on this but I'm not sure people understand how new our sport is and that me, I'm second generation disc golf and at best there's only been four generations of disc golf and the fourth generation of disc golf might be winning under 12 worlds at this point. But for the most part, he had steady eddy who was old enough to be our father and then there's us, we're second generation, our children are third generation and the fourth generation is maybe 14 to 12 years old or even younger just being born. So our sport's really new. We have a lot of things to look forward to certainly. But because the sport is so new, there's a lot of issues to take care of and I think PDGA and tournament directors and the people involved are really making big strides to take care of these things. It's a big sport now, it takes a long time but as these problems arise, I'm sure it'll be taken care of. I mean, three generations, that's all we've had. And let's go ahead and close it out on a fun topic. This is from Michigan Live. Bay City opens, Bay City opens its first ever disc golf course. The city is now home to its first ever disc golf course. The Ted Putz nature area now features a nine hole course that public works officials say was designed with all ages in mind. The course is open from dawn to dusk. So I love these articles to talk about cities getting their first course, first New York City, then Cleveland and now Bay City in Michigan. If you want to grow the sport, put a disc golf course where there hasn't been one before. Thank you very much for listening or for watching on YouTube. If you want to share some thoughts, news or opinions, shoot us an email at disc golf daily at AOL.com. I'm going to give one more little aside here. The MVP open is happening in a two and a half weeks. It is getting tough for me to carve out time to make these podcasts. So we're going to get few and far between for the next few weeks. For that, I apologize. I really thought I'd be able to keep this going but it's getting clear that it's getting tougher and tougher. So with that said, that does it for us today. Have fun, throw them straight, tell a friend about disc golf daily and hit the thin gap. We'll be back as often as we can. Thank you so much for watching. Please like, subscribe, comment and share. It really does help us grow.
