This is a printer-friendly version of an article from Zip06.com.

Few Finishing Touches Remain for Guilford Disc Golf Course

With months of buildup and plenty of hard work, disc golf is finally ready to make its grand debut in Guilford.

The new course at Bittner Park, first approved last fall by town officials and constructed over the past eight months by a largely volunteer workforce, will have its grand opening on Saturday, Sept. 14 with a bit of fanfare, said Director of Parks, Recreation & Seniors Rick Maynard.

“It’s fun, it’s a blast,” said Maynard. “People have been playing it; the feedback has been positive.”

Though Maynard is waiting for all the finishing touches before advertising or promoting the course, it has been functional and open to the public since baskets were installed last month.

Disc golf is a hybridization of golf and Frisbee, essentially asking participants to fling a plastic over long distances in order to get it into a basket in the fewest amount of strokes. Courses are set up with either nine or 18 holes like golf, and can vary greatly in difficulty, length, and style.

Maynard said that the Bittner Park course will offer something for everyone.

“It’s something that catches on,” he said. “All ages. There were kids who were seven years old playing, and guys in their 70s playing.”

A full play-through of the 18 hole course at Bittner is a brisk 2 ½ mile walk, according to Maynard. Challenges include a hole that crosses a ridge, as well as some narrow corridors of trees that have seen less experienced players bouncing s around “like ping-pong.”

“When you hit a tree, you kind of laugh,” said Maynard. “Like, ‘Aw man, I hit a tree.’ The trees are like the sand traps or water holes.”

Along with offering this kind of fun and accessibility, another benefit of a disc golf course over traditional golf is its low environmental impact; the course designer is being able to use the trees as obstacles, instead of cutting them down. Maynard said these sorts of conservation considerations were at the forefront of everyone’s mind when they decided to build the course.

A good deal of the construction has been carried out by eagle scouts from troops 474 and 471, as well as other volunteers, according to Maynard. Funding came from 18 different local businesses and organizations, Maynard said, and those who contributed will have advertising signs up on the fairways, “just like a golf course.”

“[Disc golf] is growing like crazy,” said Maynard. “My peers tell me that on average, they have 30 to 50 people every day playing disc golf on their courses.”

Guilford is the currently only town on the Connecticut shoreline where people can play disc golf, though Maynard said Killingworth is also in the process of building a course of its own.

The only parts of the Bittner course that still need to be completed are the tee-pads on the front nine holes, a number of wooden benches along the course (built from logs found in the park and designed by boy scouts Calder Scott and Zach Neiss), and the fairway signs. All of this should be completed in the next week or two, Maynard said.

That will set the stage for the grand opening, which will include inflatable bounce houses for kids, a food truck, and of course, plenty of discs for anyone wanting to test their skills.