Disc golf fans flock to Kansas City for some of the finest courses in the country

Thursday nights in the spring and summer, the steep inclines and sweeping skyline views at Waterworks Park in Kansas City, North, provide a challenging backdrop for players in the up-and-coming sport of disc golf.

There are no Frisbee disc throwers here. Instead, a smaller, sleeker piece of plastic replaces the wider, floppy fliers most remember from their youth. Teens and young men and women, for the most part, congregate. The young men, the largest group, are often bearded and clad in low-top hiking shoes suited to the sport.

And regardless of gender or age, they spend evenings chasing straight shots and dodging in the unforgiving winds.

It’s the hills at Waterworks Park that have given the disc golf course there its international reputation. To be “waterworked” is not a good thing. That has to do with how the disc may roll, and roll and roll on those hills.

“You might be putting the hole. It might hit the basket and then roll a hundred feet away,” said 51-year-old Pete Cashen, who has been playing disc golf for about 15 years and is a partial owner of Dynamic Discs on 47th Street in Kansas City, Kan., one of two local stores dedicated to the sport. “You’ll be throwing three times farther than your last putt because of that roll.”

The players at Waterworks claim the beards are not a necessary accessory for the sport, but they are indicative of serious players. These players let their discs fly year-round, in the snow and ice, sunshine or rain, even in the dark.

Rick Rothstein, who owns Disc Golf World in Kansas City and is in the Disc Golf Hall of Fame for his contributions to the development of the sport, said the sport is really gaining momentum throughout the metro area.

“The last five or six years, there seems to be no stopping. We’ve had so many courses go in locally,” Rothstein said.

“It’s just really fun throwing things at targets. That’s always a good thing to do,” said 27-year-old Greg Utz, an IT administrator who organizes the Thursday Night league at Waterworks.

Utz plays about four times a week in the summer. He said the sport is great in part because it does not require a lot of equipment. Getting started is as easy as buying two $7 discs and heading to the local park, where play is free. Of course, like any sport, a player can also get “addicted to plastic” and spend hundreds of dollars on bags, shoes, clothes and other gear.

Zeke Henry agrees part of the appeal of the sport is that “boys like to throw things.” Henry relocated to Kansas City from Denver about 12 years ago. The 32-year-old artist found the sport to be a great excuse to be outside. He also found camaraderie with fellow players. “The community of people is essentially the reason I play golf. There are just a lot of good people, a great network.”

He noticed that in the Kansas City area, as opposed to Denver, people actually use the parks.

But the same dedication they give to play, they are also giving back to the community.

“You have people who care about it and take care of it, and I noticed disc golfers are people who usually do that,” Henry said.

That attitude in Kansas City has built the area into one of the best places in the world to play disc golf.

Kansas City is one of the top cities in the world for this emerging sport, says Professional Disc Golf Association Executive Director Brian Graham.

Graham gives credit to the strong local club, the Kansas City Flying Disc Club.

“The courses there are a bunch of really nice courses — where you build the nice courses, our sport will follow,” Graham said.

The club — which is entirely a volunteer organization — gives thousands of hours to local parks and picks up millions of tons of trash as it puts boots on the ground in terrain that would otherwise go largely unused.

Most courses are free to play in public parks, but there exists a kind of hybrid public/private relationship between the disc golf club and parks and recreation departments in the area. The parks departments benefit by getting community buy-in and volunteer hours. The club benefits by having free land and the ability to run tournaments and leagues in the space. Care of the courses is a partnership. Parks departments do mowing and general maintenance. The club raises money for new equipment and planting trees. They also take some general erosion control measures by moving baskets on a regular basis and building amenities, like stairs on hills, to help make the courses easier to maneuver.

Disc golf is very similar to its better-known cousin, ball golf. Each course is 18 holes: The holes are actually baskets on poles that have to catch the disc. Each hole has a place to tee off, which is often a poured concrete slab, and every hole has a par.

The exact number of courses in the Kansas City area is a bit elusive. Disc Golf Course Review lists 51 courses in a 50-mile radius. That number does not include some private courses, like the Thornfield course in Stilwell, which is only open for charity events. Rothstein said the total is over 80, most of which have been installed in the last decade.

The fourth hole at the southern Johnson County Thornfield private disc golf course is the money hole for the Faith Love Hope Win annual fundraiser to support prostate cancer research. Little flags around the basket mark a 20-foot perimeter. Players bet to see whether anyone can get a first toss inside the ring. It is hard to do. On the way from the tee to the basket, the disks fly past a memorial stone: a reminder of the day David Emerson got a hole-in-one at the same tournament back in 2012. He had also hit a hole-in-one at the same spot in practice the day before.

That was just a few months before he died — the last time he played in the tournament he founded.

The annual fundraiser, which benefits a foundation Emerson and his wife started, is one of a handful of private charity events at Thornfield each year. The course, built and maintained by Suburban Lawn & Garden Inc. at the home of Suburban’s founder Bill Stueck, is only open for these kinds of special charity events.

The Stuecks own 132 acres, a large portion of which has been fitted with the course. Stueck said he got the idea of a charity course one evening while at Starlight Theatre in Swope Park with his wife. He saw players on the course at that park and thought about how many charity ball golf tournaments there were for nonprofits. In those, the cost is generally so high that many people cannot participate. With a disc golf course, charities can let players of all abilities and ages have a chance.

“Anybody can play, and people have a great time. It’s a wonderful thing,” Stueck said.

The Faith Love Hope Win tournament started eight years ago at Thornfield after Emerson was diagnosed with prostate cancer. He was an avid disc golf player, and many of the participants in the yearly tournament knew him.

While there are many places to play on the Kansas side of the state line, including popular courses at Rosedale Park and Shawnee Mission Park, the experience at Thornfield is special. It is on private property, and most players only are able to go there once or twice a year when they play in charity events.

The charity event at Thornfield gave T.K. Hays, a 53-year-old accounts manager, a chance to play a course that requires a precise throw.

“I’m not a super-strong thrower. The hole placement is more technical here. Everybody has to place a shot,” Hays said.

Hays, who participates in several sports, points out that the primary difference in disc golf is the attitude of the players.

“People are way less stressed. You hardly ever see anybody going crazy and breaking a golf club or throwing it out in the pond. We will throw it out in the pond, but not on purpose,” said Hays with a laugh.

Discs in the river, pond, trees or “waterworked” down a hill are pretty much par for the course in the sport. But the friendly, open-spirited attitude that goes along with the players in the Kansas City area is contributing to the growth of the sport.

But ease of attitude does not mean players are casual about the sport. While they embrace new players, and encourage younger kids, women and families to pick it up, they are also quick to point out the growing acceptance of the sport on venues like ESPN Sports- Center.

Local players also take great pride in the local courses.

When Jack Lowe first moved to the historic Northeast area of Kansas City, he noticed the huge, 300-plus-acre Kessler Park had few users and a lot of trash. The park is one of the oldest in the city and also home to the picturesque Cliff Drive, which at the time was overgrown and impassable.

Many people saw the park as an undesirable area with a lot of problems. Lowe saw a perfect spot for disc golf.

“Trying to put some positive activity back into the park is something that I have passion about. I thought it would improve our community and the quality of life. It was a beautiful piece of land that wasn’t being utilized as well as it should be,” Lowe said.

Since Lowe was a disc golf player, he knew the rolling hills and underutilized spaces would be perfect for a course. The fact that few people used the space was actually good for the sport, which needs clearance and a lot of land. Lowe applied for a Kansas City Public Improvements Advisory Committee grant to make the improvement in the park. He worked with the neighborhood groups. Between 2000 and 2004, a permanent course became a reality.

The course not only gave disc golf players the opportunity to have a new Kansas City space in which to play, but also changed the park as a whole. It went from basically seeing a couple of people walking on the trails to seeing a dozen or so, then 20.

“Now we see an average of 200 people out there playing weekly,” said Lowe.

Disc golf often goes into parks that are not good for other improvements. The rolling hills and steep terrains that do not allow for the development of community centers, sports fields or playground equipment are perfect for disc golf.

The first disc golf course in Kansas City went into Swope Park in 1981. The course is the closest to a country club feel you might find at a ball golf course. It has a clubhouse and deck, and sees hundreds of players a week. Today the Swope Park course is one of the five main courses in Kansas City. The newest opened at Hidden Valley Park near Worlds of Fun.

Superintendent of parks for Kansas City Forest Decker said regular use by disc golfers and the volunteer trash pickup, limb removal and other maintenance issues taken care of by players are good for parks. It has also pushed forward the development of the improvements.

“It gets community buy-in,” Decker said. “They are putting in their time and effort. They have a vested interest in helping us keep the park safe and clean. It’s not just that they are building something and they have a personal tie to it. It makes our job easier, and it makes the courses a lot more successful, too.”

The relationship is formalized with a “memorandum of understanding.” It is not exactly a contract, but rather a helpful agreement that benefits both sides.

Kansas City Flying Disc Club entered into its first such agreement with the parks department in 2003. Since then the disc club has the opportunity to give input on direction and planning for the courses and other elements in the parks that may affect the courses. In return they donate volunteer labor to make the courses appealing to players. The group now has similar partnerships with 12 cities within a 50-mile radius in the metro area.

In Kansas City, the courses have gone into several older parks in the urban core. These parks have large areas and plenty of places where people can hide. The disc golfers put boots on the ground and eyes on the lookout for negative activity. Often, the golfers are able to notice problems before parks employees have to chance to see it.

“The parks don’t have the staff to maintain each hole like a ball golf course does, because we are not revenue-generating, but Kansas City is probably one of the premier places in the world to play disc golf,” Lowe said. “Our partnerships have enabled us to maintain the courses at the level that we are and to be a value-added partner with them. People have grown accustomed to great courses.”

This story was originally published June 9, 2015 at 3:27 PM with the headline "Disc golf fans flock to Kansas City for some of the finest courses in the country."