Pinellas Park to add disc golf course in Youth Park
By Anne Lindberg, Times Staff Writer
In Print: Sunday, June 28, 2009
Largo’s John S. Taylor Park already has a disc golf course. From left, Clif Floyd, 38, of Georgia and Mitch Floyd, 14, and Nick Bailey, 15, both of Tennessee, discuss the course’s 16th hole back in March.
PINELLAS PARK — This city's staff has the go-ahead to create the county's newest disc golf course.
The 18-hole course will be at Youth Park, 4100 66th Ave. N. The 30-acre park already has three baseball fields, seven soccer fields, a tot lot, playground equipment and a multipurpose court, among other things.
"It was just one of those things that somebody said, 'This would be easy and could go on there until we do something else,' " Pinellas Park spokesman Tim Caddell said.
Council members heard about the idea during a workshop Tuesday.
"They said, 'Cool, go with it,' " Caddell said.
The idea has several advantages over other ideas for Youth Park, Caddell said.
First, setting up a course is relatively inexpensive — about $8,000 for the metal baskets that act as "holes" — and the course is relatively maintenance-free once it's set up. Additionally, disc golf is a game that all ages can play.
It's played much like traditional golf except that players toss a disc towards a basket. Like golf, the player must take his or her next throw from the lie, or landing spot, of the disc. The person with the fewest throws wins.
It's unclear where or when disc golf originated, although the Professional Disc Golf Association says there are references to a similar game as far back as 1926 in Vancouver, British Columbia. Kids there played a game with lids that became known as Tin Lid Golf that was pretty much forgotten as those kids got older.
Other references to a similar game come from the 1930s through 1960s when it seemed to fizzle out just as the Frisbee came onto the market.
But pockets of disc golf-like activities remained, including a California effort that used Frisbees as the discs and Hula Hoops as the "holes." Eventually, Wham-O, the manufacturer of the Frisbee, included disc golf as one of the activities in its annual World Frisbee Championships and the game took off.
Pinellas has several of the courses, most north of Ulmerton Road. The best known may be in Clearwater.
Caddell said it will take six to eight weeks to build the Pinellas Park course. Opening is expected by the end of the summer.
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