John Bryan State Park Disc Golf Course
I’ve been working in Yellow Springs since 2004 at Bing Design. Years ago, the grounds near Antioch College had a disc golf course near our office that we could play. Around 2009 the college took out all the baskets for the discs without any more about the course closure. Later I found out that John Bryan State Park had acquired the ‘holes’ and was going to install them, but the course didn’t happen for years. Last summer I took my lunch at the park and saw they had finally put up the baskets!
Today, I decided to play a round at lunch. I have a bag of about 20 discs that is normally in my car, but none were with me so I bought one at the park office. Of all days to play, I chose a day with strong winds and 30+ MPH gusts! Learn hard and improve fast I say!
I asked the park office if they had a course map when I arrived, and the woman on duty said ‘no, they planned to map the course out but had not’. This evening I got online and it seems there are NO MAPS for the course anywhere. Just folks wondering if it is going to happen or how the course is laid-out. It is as if the park maintenance crew just put up baskets and moved on to another project.
According to the park they have an 18-hole disc course, but I only counted 8 ‘holes’ visible to me per the image below. I suppose some may be in the woods, or in another place out of view, but I did not see them.
So… I tried to take note of where I was on the course today, and have made an unofficial, somewhat inaccurate course map below for John Bryan State Park’s disc golf course. I saw tonight how to use my iPhone’s map to mark exact locations, so maybe by the weekend I’ll have the baskets marked properly. But for now, I failed to get pics for all the holes and didn’t write down where some were. I don’t think I have all the goals numbered properly, and simply could not find some of the ‘holes’ (if they are even set-up).
So far there do not appear to be tee boxes established on the course yet as it seems the course is still a work in progress. But the course is still fun and very accessible! Hopefully I’ll find the rest of the ‘holes’ to complete this courtesy post!
Photos of the ‘holes’ from today are below (click to see larger shots)…
2 COMMENTS
LOL, so I found this blog post after attempting to play this “course” today with my wife before a long hike. Great park, not so great DG course. I’ve been playing DG for 20 years or so and have played around 60 different courses total over that time. I’ve played on some difficult to navigate courses, but this has to be the most frustratingly bad attempt at a DG layout I’ve ever seen. It seems there are some primitive posts in place to (possibly?) show you where to tee off from now, but they are in weird spots and I’m not even certain they are correct. I never noticed a tee near the parking lot for #1, though that would make sense. Instead, there is a pole across the street from #1, going towards 2. Strangely, there is an extra(?) pole in the vicinity of where I assumed we were supposed to tee off for #3. WE never found 7 and 8, didn’t realize there was a #11 and #12… are you kidding me? Thats got to be a solid 1/4 mile away, if it even exists. I can’t understand how a park this cool, with so much room to play with, could screw this up this badly, lol. I hope they get it figured out!
Yeah, and to complicate things more, shortly after I did the map with my friend Chad, the park started work on the course again! They added new posts for tee boxes, marked locations for new tee boxes and started putting new basket anchors down, but then work stopped again. I salute them for the work, planning, and new hardware, but it has confused many including regular players. Maybe all this chatter will show them the course has fans… 🙂