We were thinking of taking a family disc golf road trip somewhere warmer sometime soon. At this point, 40s would seem warm! :eek: What are the good courses in Alabama, Georgia and South Carolina? "Good" should include a safe place to park the car, and beyond that, whatever you think is good. But we like good short courses as well as good long courses.

Gotta check out Flyboy near Atlanta just for the experience. The layout is long and tough but easy to get around. It's 27 but you could just play 18. George Ward in Birmingham would fit your shorter course ideal and you could meet up with Tom Monroe who's at the course regularly. Play Earlwood in Columbia, SC for a classic and popular old school layout with cone baskets.

Cone baskets would be awesome. I started on cones. The girls have never seen them.

I checked and they aren't cones but I seem to recall that some of the baskets may have dome tops. They are definitely old baskets but the course is worth checking out.

Yeah they just have a metal dome top.

Apparently they were fitted with a second set of lighter chains so they catch much better now.

If you play Earlewood don't miss Crooked Creek in Chapin, SC...it's a sweet one.

If you go up Greenville way play Timmons, Century, and Va-Du-Mar in Spartanburg.

Sertoma field in Walhalla is a blast.

If you find yourself in the GA mountains try Meeks Park in Blairsville, its a lot of fun.

When, and for how long?

South Carolina and its neighbors in Augusta & Charlotte offer plenty to choose from. In the "very good short course" category, it's hard to beat the 100 mile stretch from Columbia to the Upstate (Greenville & beyond)---Earlewod, Crooked Creek, Timmons, Foothills, etc.

Augusta & Charlotte have enough good and great courses that each is a worthy destination, in itself.

Oh yeah, Stoney Hill's in the middle of all that.

I think this area is a bit warmer than Alabama, unless you go all the way to Mobile.

Hey Bruce,

As I mentioned to you when I saw you at the DAM course in TN - the Atlanta area features several courses. The newly redesigned Wills park with 19 Concrete tees and 19 brand new Discatchers would be a nice varied course in a safe area just a few miles off GA 400 (US 19). Also nearby on 400 a few miles south from Wills is an all wooded East Roswell Park which has 3 sets of crusher run tees and about 8 miles north of Wills on 400 is a wooded and open Central Park which has 3 sets of (some natural some rubber matting) tees and a layout similar to Hudson Mills in that you can play 18 in a loop or 27 by shooting off into the woods for 9 additional holes (some of my favorites are in there)
Timed right and depending on direction travelling and stamina - you could play all 3 courses in 6-7 hours total in the same day :)

Also dependiing on direction travelling if you are close by - you should play the Flyboy course - it is definately GA's best permanent "temp course" (Kelly is constantly challenging the players with different layouts and basket location placements).
Keep in mind FlyBoy is a private course and you need to pay greens fees as well as view a safety presentation as it is in an "aviation neighborhood" and you will most likey spend most if not all day there if you go just wanting to play some holes over again :)

If your in Alabama come to Trussville, about 15 minutes north of b'ham. I have 2 courses 1 minute apart, Civitan and the Greg Carter Memorial, the GCM is a fairly new short technical wooded course with alot of terrain change. Very fun course to play. And Civitan is also a great course too.

TK

IDGC?!? (http://www.pdga.com/IDGC)

Oconee County, SC has 4 18-hole courses, a 9-hole course and one course just installed 6 additional baskets (making it 24) but tee and signs have not be installed. Could play a great variety of courses in a small area. There are five additional courses a short drive away in neighboring communities.

Oconee County, SC borders GA and NC. Only 2 hours from Atlanta and 2 hours from Charlotte.

Details at http://godgc.com/godg-courses (http://godgc.com/godg-courses/)/

Our Southern Tour

On Friday we played Athens Sports Complex in Athens, Alabama. No one recomended this course, but it was the course we were playing for the tournament on Saturday. Athens is flat, long and open with a lot of road and creek o.b. It has concrete tees and commercially manufactured baskets. The tournament was well run and we had fun.

On Sunday we played Indian Creek and Monte Sano in Huntsville. Indian Creek was also longish and open, but it also had wooded holes and a lot of elevation. It had concrete tees and commercial baskets. The course routing was easy to follow. It is a pretty good course.

Monte Sano is shorter and carved out of the woods. Although the course is on top of a mountain, the elevation changes were not extreme. Hole 1 was hard to find so we parked at hole 2 and started there. The hole numbering has been changed twice and the PDGA directions to the first tee are no longer correct. Also, when you get close to the camp store there is a strange walk from hole five or six to the next. Monte Sano had carpet tees and portable tee signs, because the park did not want a permanent installation, I was told. The tee signs near the picnic ground were ripped off, but the course routing was still easy to follow.

On Monday we played Ward Park in Birmingham and Greg Carter Memorial in Trussville. Ward Park is a delightful course, a traditional par 3 kind of course with lots of fun elevation changes. It had fresh tournament o.b. markings which made for a better course than you might find on any random Monday. The course routing was easy to follow. The original 18 had concrete tees and the new 6 had carpet tees. The Ward Park neighborhood was a little shaky, a little more urban than I would prefer, but there were other disc golfers in the park and we felt safe.

GCM is the new course in Trussville. It was mostly in the woods with dramatic elevation changes and impressive rock formations. It is pretty short but not as easy as it is short. You had to hit your line to get a birdie.

On Tuesday it was raining in Atlanta. We were told in Birmingham that we would not be able to get on the Flyboy course because the host was out of town. We played one course I had heard about but it was in the process of being renovated and redesigned, so I cannot really comment. We played parts of it and then drove to Jekyll Island.

Jekyll Island was awesome. No disc golf, but we saw an osprey with a fish, a bald eagle, dolphins, pelicans, crabs, live sand dollars burrowing into the sand at low tide, and the private security maintaining the perimeter of an area where they were shooting the next X-Men movie. We also saw the X-Men village of trailers and portable buildings. We did not see any of the actors.

We spent one day in Orlando playing the Pirates game at Disney Quest. We are "Masters of the High Seas" and the Disney staff were pretty impressed with our scores. The last day we went to Barnett Park but it was closed. The gates were closed and padlocked. We were not sure what that was about, but it was time to head north so we drove up to Ocala.

Near Ocala we got off the highway to find wifi and get course directions. Since it turned out we exited at the Greenway course exit we tried to follow the PDGA directions to the Greenway course. The directions did not work very well. I'm not certain if it was the directions or the driver. We drove around randomly, shouting swear words, until we found ourselves back on the proper route. The Greenway is a very nice course in a piney woods with palmettos, Spanish moss and other Florida vegetation. We followed a sevensome for awhile and then coincidentally caught up with a friend from Michigan visits Ocala frequently, so I could not say whether the course routing was easy to follow. I do recall that there were many next tee signs nailed 10 or 12 feet up on the pines near each basket. Very clever, putting those up high where the idiots can't vandalize them. Kudos for that.