I was driving to Sacramento earlier this summer. Listening to the radio, a commercial came over the airwaves for Cherry Island Golf Course in the north Sacramento suburb of Elverta. I have played Cherry Island some two dozen times and it is a solid public course that is run by the County of Sacramento. It was designed by Robert Muir Graves (Sea Ranch, Baywood, Contra Costa C.C., and some 50 other courses in California) and it is a beautiful parkland-style course.
However, the advertisement caught me off guard. It promoted a day at Cherry Island for eight players along with four motorized carts and eight adult beverages for the total cost of $100. In case you think that perhaps Cherry Island was giving away golf, you are very wrong. Instead, they were promoting Foot Golf, a type of golf-like game that is played with a soccer ball. You can also play Foot Golf at such well known golf facilities as Haggin Oaks in Sacramento and Foxtail in Rohnert Park.
There’s also Disc Golf. Disc Golf has been around a whole lot longer than Foot Golf and instead of being played with a soccer ball, a disc is used. In fact, to the more serious of disc golfers, a number of differently sized and weighted discs are used for a variety of shots. You don’t have to go too far to play Disc Golf as it has been a staple at Highland Springs for more than 40 years, is currently played at Black Rock Golf Course (formerly Hobergs/Rob Roy) on Cobb Mountain as well as Buckingham Golf and Country Club at the base of Mount Konocti. Plans are afoot to open another Disc Golf facility at Westside Park in Lakeport.
Participation in golf is on the downswing since the turn of the century. Golf is time consuming and expensive. While the professional tours are most popular with the viewing public, the Tiger Woods generation hasn’t participated in the growth of the game, locally or nationally. Locally, Lake County’s four primary golf courses, namely Adams Springs, Black Rock, Buckingham and Hidden Valley Lake, have experienced decreased revenues and decreased rounds of golf. Participation in tournaments on the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit is decidedly down. High school golf programs at Clear Lake, Kelseyville and Middletown continue to exist, but during the past few years the high school teams at Lower Lake and Upper Lake have been eliminated because of funding cuts and a lack of interest.
It almost was a decade ago that former PGA of America president Ted Bishop, the owner and operator of a 45-hole golf complex in Franklin, Indiana, added Disc Golf and Foot Golf to his facility so that he could compete financially in a tough golf market. With a golf course economy that is noted for a closure of a facility every other day nationally for the past seven years, it was necessary for Bishop to diversify to stay financially afloat. Locally, while Adams Springs and Hidden Valley Lake are still holding out and keeping their facilities as strictly golf only, Black Rock and Buckingham have some degree of active afternoon play and a contingent of participants who are walking the same fairways as golfers such as Jonathan Carlson, Brad Pendleton, Juan Lopez and Matt Wotherspoon.
I visited with the disc golfers on the day Buckingham opened its facility to the sport in mid-August. I spoke with several groups and talked extensively with Disc Golf Association professional Andrew Burbee, who designed the course at Buckingham. The game of disc golf was invented and developed by Ed Headrick, a former Lakeport resident who died in 2002 at the age of 78. Headrick is best known as a former Wham-O employee in Southern California who developed a kid’s toy that received the patent number 3359678. It was called the Frisbee. Floating like a flying saucer, the Frisbee disc was a popular toy during the heady days of post-World War II playthings such as the hula hoop and the yo-yo. Sorry, but I’m starting to show my age as I owned all three of these toys as a youth.
Down through the years, Headrick also invented the Disc Golf pole, developed rules for the playing of the game along the lines of golf, and promoted the sport. When I first came to Lake County in the early 1980s, I used to go to Highland Springs and play Disc Golf with fellow teachers Alan Grant and Dennis Rollins as well as the owner of the local Army-Navy Surplus Store, Steve Sylar. Sylar had a most unique style in that many of his shots were rolled along the ground. When I mentioned this to the disc golfers playing at Buckingham that Saturday afternoon in August, they spoke of Sylar in almost referential terms. From their perspective, he is the godfather of disc golf in Lake County.
While I talked with young adults such as Joe and Sam, who saw the opening of the course at Buckingham as an “awesome experience,” it was Burbee who had the most profound interpretation of the growth of disc golf in Lake County. Burbee, who has played in professional Disc Golf tournaments in such far flung places as Australia and Sweden, contended that the addition of the courses at Black Rock and Buckingham were a great addition to the Disc Golf community. He estimated that there were approximately 150 card-carrying Disc Golf Association members in Lake County. He stated that “it was a dream of mine since I’ve lived here” to bring a major Disc Golf Championship to Lake County. With the ability to play the game at three locales in the area, a tournament will be held during the weekend of Oct. 17-18 with play rotating for professionals and amateurs at Highland Springs, Black Rock and Buckingham. Burbee added that local golfer Javier Castaneda has been the impetus behind the coordination and growth of Disc Golf in conjunction with area golf courses.
Next year the Lake County Amateur Golf Circuit will schedule more one-day events than two-day tourneys for the first time in its 23-year history. Meanwhile, the first major Disc Golf Association tournament to come to Lake County may have as many as 300 contestants. I don’t ever foresee Disc Golf being played at Pebble Beach or at the Olympic Club, but then again, you never know. The game has fallen out of touch with the current generation. It’s expensive as well as time consuming. Its stuffed-shirt approach lacks appeal with the youth of the 21st century. While I worry about safety issues with golfers, disc golfers and foot golfers roaming the same constricted area of planet earth, I haven’t heard any stories of the disc golfers getting hit by golf balls. It’s a new era and disc golfers are a very real part of it in Lake County.
