Sarah Crookall
Staff Reporter
KILLALOE – A flurry of neon pink, orange, and blue discs whizzed across Round Lake Centre Park on Saturday for the grand opening of a new disc golf course in the township of Killaloe, Hagarty and Richards (KHR).
The 9-hole disc golf course is fully funded by the Canadian Tire Jumpstart Sport Relief Fund, and cost about $2,000 to complete.
Chris Neff, the Community Development Coordinator for KHR, says he thoroughly researched disc golf to make sure the course was fun and interesting.
“I want it to be fun for regular people, but also challenging for people to come back,” he said.
Disc golf is similar to frisbee, but its rules are similar to golf. Players tee-up at a pad, marked by signs, and throw discs at a basket draped with chains. Each ‘hole’ has its own par value based on the distance and design of the net. The winner emerges with the lowest number of throws.
The Canadian-born sport is played with three different types of discs: a putter, a mid-range, and a driver. Neff says that because the discs tend to float players get better results aiming higher than when throwing a frisbee.
“In a regular frisbee…you’re kind of lofting it, whereas (disc golf) is a follow through movement like a baseball bat,” said Neff.
“I made the first (hole) really open so that people could get used to what they have to do so by the time they get to the second hold they’re like, ‘Okay, I got this kind of figured out.’ So I would say once you play two or three times you’ve pretty much got the dynamics of it.”
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