My name is Eric Vandenberg #3089 and I am the volunteer PDGA Course Archivist. In 2012, aided by PDGA Disc Golf Course Directory Editor Cliff Towne #5450, I started what has become several projects to find and track disc golf courses and have compiled a database of known disc golf courses by course list, directory, and other sources. In the process, several particularly interesting documents have come to my attention which have helped to narrow down the installation dates for many of these courses. The following is a brief history of disc golf course lists and directories as I know it and a list of the earliest 5 or so courses by state.
Cover photo scanned from the 1986 PDGA Course Directory.
Gathering course information outside of the United States has always been a challenge. For those who enjoy statistics, the 1984 Course Directory had six Canadian courses, two of which were misidentified temporary courses. 1986 listed an additional eight Scandinavian courses. The 1990 directory had 32 non-US courses, 1993 listed 50, 1995=110, 2002=219, 2007=337, year-end 2011=499, year-end 2015=1113 and year-end 2021 showed 2614 active courses.
Did you just play a course that is not in the PDGA Course Directory? Have you played a course for years that isn't in the course directory? Have you thought "Wow, why doesn't someone add that course in there?" Have you complained on a discussion board about how everyone else in the world is not adding that dang course? Did you even know that you can add a course to the PDGA Course Directory yourself? Well you can!
