I have not started a thread in a minute but i would love to hear from disc golf course deisgners out there on this question.

we have a proposed course here locally to be installed this year. the municipality has allocated 14 acres for the course to occupy. the propsed course is long in the 6500 foot range.

My question is is it possible to have a quality course installed on such a small parcel of land.

note, the land is located 2 block from the beach in a maritime forest that is "fairly" densly wooded. not super thick but decently wooded.

you could create a quality course on 14 acres, depending on how you define quality.

typically one would like 1 to 1.5 acres per hole so 14 acres for 18 holes is less than what i'd normally consider adequate. but a lot has to do with how much of the 14 acres is usable.

perhaps a quality recreational / beginners type course could be created on 14 acres?

dandoyle
warwick, ny

Thanks for the reply dan. speaking with the course designers in my area i agree with your sentiment that adaquate space would be an acre a hole. the prelimary design is a course close to 7000 feet long which is far from a blue level course.

That seems awful tight for a 6500-7000' course.

At, 7000' feet, that's an average of 389' per hole. If you add a 60' walk to the next hole, you're at 450'. If you allocate 100' width for each fairway and buffer, you've got a little over an acre per hole. Or 18 acres total, more than you've got. So you can squeeze it in with 80' width for each fairway & buffer. But that's assuming it fits together perfectly with zero wasted space, and that buffers are good enough that some fairway widths are less than 80'.

Not knowing the land, but it seems more likely that a shorter course, around 5,000', or a 9-holer with dual teepads, would fitter better.

Thanks for the reply david. it is a municipality that is handling this project. what you are saying is my exact concern. i am thinking the holes are going to crowd on each other making it dangerous to play. buti do not have anything to do with it. i meerly wanted to start a discussion here to get a little more idea of if it can be done or not.

Not every situation is ideal. Few are. A great positive is the city providing land for a course. We'd hope, of course, that the city and/or designers are wise in the decisions and make the best use of it.

One of my favorite courses, Earlewood, is a short course shoehorned into a small property. Yes, errant throws can land on the next fairway, or if you're as bad as I, 2 fairways away. Timmons in Greenville, SC is another I enjoy with the same coziness. In tournaments on both, we spend a lot of time waiting while someone throws on another hole, to avoid disturbing them.

Not ideal but it can work. I prefer their layouts to more spacious 9-holers that could have been built on the same properties.

But with 14 acres, I'd expect a shorter course than 6500-7000' would work best.

The acreage needed for hole separation depends on the amount of foliage. Here's our acreage estimator: http://www.pdga.com/documents/course-design-acreage-guide

One detriment to squeezing a course into the minimum acreage is that you're using almost every bit of land, so likely to have weak compromise and filler holes. If you, say, go 9 holes on 14 acres, or 5000' instead of 7000', you have more room to maneuver the design, make the best use of property features, and make better holes.

At, 7000' feet, that's an average of 389' per hole. If you add a 60' walk to the next hole, you're at 450'. If you allocate 100' width for each fairway and buffer, you've got a little over an acre per hole. Or 18 acres total, more than you've got. So you can squeeze it in with 80' width for each fairway & buffer. But that's assuming it fits together perfectly with zero wasted space, and that buffers are good enough that some fairway widths are less than 80'.


A 100' wide fairway is not generous. Only 6 out of 10 blue players will hit a 100 foot wide fairway on a 350 foot hole.

Nor is 60' to the next tee. I realize that---I was pointing out that at that very tight squeeze, about 80' width fairways, you could squeeze a 7000' course onto 14 acres. I didn't say it was a good idea.

Of course, many courses allow errant drives to encroach into other fairways, a bit of shared space. Not preferable, but done.

David,
do you know off the top of your head how much land earlwood occupies?

No, sorry. I have in my mind that the entire park is 22 acres, but that includes ballfields and unused area.....and my suspect mind, which might have grabbed that number from some unrelated endeavor.

Earlewood is only something like 4600', and there's scarcely a hole where you can't drive onto another fairway. Despite which it's pretty fun and remains popular.

David,
thanks buddy. i have played the earlwood tournemant for 4 of the last 5 years. it is by far my favorite short course on the planet. i apprecaite your input.

14 acres=9 holes OR 18 shorter holes, i would probably go for the latter if it's close to the beach as i believe 9 holers to be less attractive to beginning players.