CENTRE WELLINGTON – A local man is looking for the Township of Centre Wellington to consider creating a permanent disc golf course to add to the town’s recreation offerings.
James Scott, who operates a pop-up disc golf course at Elora Public School on Saturday mornings, said in a delegation to council Tuesday afternoon the sport has been booming since the pandemic because it’s outside and has a low barrier to entry as it can be played with just one disc.
It’s also accessible to a wide range of people as most courses are free to play.
“I play with my grandfather who is 90 years old and you can also have kids as young as five and six,” Scott said.
He felt it’s more reasonable recreation for the township to offer as it is cheaper to build and can accommodate more people at a given time.
“For a nine-hole course you can have up to 36 people using a course every hour, if you compare that to a tennis, tennis can only have four people utilizing a course per hour,” Scott said, adding he estimated a disc golf course would cost about $10,000.
Disc golf tourism exists too, he added, as he said data from a popular disc golf app showed 87 per cent of players travelled at least 32 km to play around. Data from the same app logged 4,500 games played in the first year of Guelph’s newest course, one of three public ones.
The pop-up course he runs at Elora Public School has also seen good use, despite having to charge a small fee, so he saw a mix of locals who never played before and those who came from nearby cities for disc golf tourism.
He suggested the Centre Wellington Sportsplex in Fergus might be a good location for the course but was simply asking parks and recreation staff to look into the feasibility of this.
Councillors said they were glad to hear from Scott and felt it was a good idea to consider.
Mayor Shawn Watters noted the timing of this delegation was fitting as it came up when he was at Centre Wellington District High School asking for students’ vision for the community.
“A number of them said they would love to see a disc golf course, so your presentation is very timely,” Watters said.
