I'm messing around with a system to predict the popularity of prospective disc golf courses. To test it, I tried to find the places where new disc golf courses are most desperately needed. Here are the top five:

1. Wards Island Park, New York, NY
2. Stony Brook Reservation, Boston, MA
3. Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, Los Angeles, CA
4. Glen Canyon Park, San Francisco, CA
5. La Bagh Woods Preserve, Chicago, IL

Although I arbitrarily picked a particular park (just for fun), actually there are large swaths of populated areas around these locations that could use several new courses.

For example, any course within New York City would become one of the most popular in the country. In particular need is the area from Central Park up to the north and east to the Bronx Zoo.

I think there is a reason that the Prospect Golf Disc Course in Brooklyn is still an object course. Every morning near this course and some of the NYC areas you mentioned, numerous homeless people can be seen pushing shopping carts filled with different metal scraps to sell at salvage/scrap metal yards.

Granted, this is mostly copper and brass, but in certain neighborhoods, nothing lasts long. Even in the best areas there would be a lot of maintainence involved between the weather and vandals alone.

Perhaps pay-to-play would work better downstate, especially on an exisiting "pitch and putt" golf course which are fairly plentiful in that region. Federally protected parks seem to fare better as well but that would take some red tape cutting I am sure.

I visited my home town recently and traveled upstate to Warwick. It was very much worth the trip but it is not something I would do every weekend. Although that "Black Dirt Red" at the Warwick Winery located nearby sure would make it tempting.

Although that "Black Dirt Red" at the Warwick Winery located nearby sure would make it tempting.



Thanks for the recommendation. I love red wine and will have to try it next time I'm up there. :cool:

as one of the major course designers in the nyc area, i've made some inquiries into the feasibility of a course in Central park. my steel fabrication business has done work for the NYC parks department over the years and i'm pretty familiar with central park.

i've scouted the park and i haven't found a suitable location where we wouldn't interfere with existing trails and activities, and vice-versa. on a nice day virtually every spot in that park is a suitable picnic location. within a short period of time, someone would get nailed with an errant bevel-edged disc and that would put an end to the course.

i think it would be possible to put a course in Van Cortland park in the northern portion of The Bronx. altho i've ventured into NYC my entire life and have never feared for my safety, i wouldn't be too excited about playing a round in Van Cortland Park and finding myself in a very secluded part of that park.

the key is to design a course within a short ride of public transportation. we're eyeballing a few parks at the present time within a 30-minute bus or train ride from manhattan.

dan doyle
warwick, ny

The Apple, Black Courant, and Cherry Port Wines they make are fabulous. They are a major food group at informal Warwick events.

Cool beans Dan! Meanwhile, the Sangria at Warwick was better than any I enjoyed in Spain.

I realized I missed another major point in NY regarding the large amounts of people in a very small area. Even here in Las Vegas I have seen people using baskets for things unrelated to DG. We rarely played frisbee on the beaches because the blankets were wall to wall.

Hmm, Horseshoe Crab A La Discatcher...?

as one of the major course designers in the nyc area, i've made some inquiries into the feasibility of a course in Central park . . . . i've scouted the park and i haven't found a suitable location where we wouldn't interfere with existing trails and activities, and vice-versa. on a nice day virtually every spot in that park is a suitable picnic location. within a short period of time, someone would get nailed with an errant bevel-edged disc and that would put an end to the course.


Completely agree, unfortunately.

About 4-5 years ago, Sheila and I visited our daughter in Manhattan. She was attending college there. We took a portable DGA "blue-thru" basket that one of us had won at Worlds in either 2000 or 2002.

On Sunday morning at about 7 am, we parked alongside Central Park and made up and then played, an entire disc golf course, including some really nice holes with the basket up on top of some very large rocks.

As big as Central Park is, you really could not safely put a disc golf course in there. We barely got through before the park was too busy even for what we did.

what makes central park so difficult as a potential course site is that virtually every nook and cranny in the park is someone's favorite spot to do their thing. it's not like every nook and cranny is ALWAYS inhabited by folks but at any given moment it's impossible to predict when park guests would just wander onto one of our fairways.

it's a fantastic park in terms of what a course designer would want: woods, fields, lawns, water, huge boulders, and much hillier than most folks would imagine.

even a one-day event on a temporary course would be almost impossible, unfortunately.

Although that "Black Dirt Red" at the Warwick Winery located nearby sure would make it tempting.



Thanks for the recommendation. I love red wine and will have to try it next time I'm up there. :cool:



Sorry to get off topic, but my wife and I discovered a New York red which is wonderful to drink and cook with......"Love My Goat Red" by Bully Hill. Absolutely, the best red I've ever had for less than ten bucks....

Now, back to your regularly scheduled programming.... :D

I'm messing around with a system to predict the popularity of prospective disc golf courses. To test it, I tried to find the places where new disc golf courses are most desperately needed. Here are the top five:

1. Wards Island Park, New York, NY
2. Stony Brook Reservation, Boston, MA
3. Kenneth Hahn State Recreation Area, Los Angeles, CA
4. Glen Canyon Park, San Francisco, CA
5. La Bagh Woods Preserve, Chicago, IL

Although I arbitrarily picked a particular park (just for fun), actually there are large swaths of populated areas around these locations that could use several new courses.

For example, any course within New York City would become one of the most popular in the country. In particular need is the area from Central Park up to the north and east to the Bronx Zoo.


What did you include as data for your system?

About 65,000 data points with population/latitude/longitude from the 2000 census, plus lat/long on about 1850 courses in the US.

I have a formula which assigns a score to each population data point, based on the distance to the nearest courses.

I calculated the score for every data point, multiplied by the population of that data point. Then, for every hypothetical course, I re-calculated the scores for all the data points. The places where a new course made the biggest difference were those 5.

Just wondering if Rock Creek Park in Washington DC was even close to being in the top 10.
It is probably too close to College Park MD and Arlington VA

Timber

Please explain "distance to the nearest courses." Did you set a distance limit, like a buffer around a population point? Was there any limit on the number of courses linked to a population point? Did you control for the number of holes on the course?

I do a little GIS work myself and have been pondering such a model. Yours sounds interesting!

Rock Creek Park in DC is a very interesting selection. It has plenty of population around it, and really, not many other courses.

"Top Ten" is kind of a difficult concept in this setting. Here's why. If you find a good place for a course, often the next best place is right next to it. So, what you find is clusters of spots, or general areas, where a course could go.

For example, the 5 areas I listed encompass the 100 census tracts where a new course could make the biggest difference. Of these 5 were in Boston, 25 in Los Angeles, 35 in Chicago, 8 in San Francisco, and 27 in Miami.

As an example, San Francisco's 8 tracts ranked 12th, 15th, 35th, 51st, 64th, 93rd, 97th, and 98th.

(Digressing for a bit, Chicago surprised me. They have 40 courses within 35 miles. I guess there's a gap where all the people live.)

I used the latitude and longitude that the census bureau assigns to each tract as the point � I'll call this the center of the tract. I thought my system would give higher scores to the centers of the tracts, because there would be so many people living right on top of the course. So, I thought I was safe in not checking the spaces between tracts for more optimal locations.

However, when I plugged Rock Creek Park into the formula, it showed up as the 69th best place to locate a course. Hmmm. This park shows up as a better place to put a course than any census tract center in D.C. Somewhat surprising, but not shocking. A course's influence goes out for miles. So, being among many population centers would be more important that being right on top of any particular one.

Which means that I may not have identified all the best places to put a course. There may be some that are not located in the center of a census tract.

I should be plugging in the locations of the places where a course might actually go. I'll have to look for a database of parks, with latitude, longitude and acreage.

Please explain "distance to the nearest courses." Did you set a distance limit, like a buffer around a population point? Was there any limit on the number of courses linked to a population point? Did you control for the number of holes on the course?

I do a little GIS work myself and have been pondering such a model. Yours sounds interesting!



It would take too long here. I wrote a whole paper on it. Either join the Disc Golf Course Designer's group to read it, or send me an email.

I'll give you a taste. Every course is linked to every popluation point. The farther away a course is, the less influence it has for that popluation point. A course also has less influence if there are other courses closer to the population point. More baskets means more influence.

However, in this particular exercise, I didn't have data for the number of baskets, so I had to leave that out.

Willow Brook Golf Course had 20 players per day for the two weeks it had temps out, and then 106 players for a tournament in the rain and 40s.

Willow Brook has to be the busiest course that just doesn't get it!

Out of curiosity, do you deal at all with areas with "variable" populations, such as college towns? For example, Boulder, CO (home to the University of Colorado), has a 9-hole course that is over-riden with 7-somes and 8-somes just about every hour of every day, especially when school is in. Summers slack off a bit since most students go "home," but are still quite busy. I'd assume that the population of Boulder would not reflect the true seasonality of its population, and therefore the area would be "degraded" (for lack of a better word)?

Out of curiosity, do you deal at all with areas with "variable" populations, such as college towns? For example, Boulder, CO (home to the University of Colorado), has a 9-hole course that is over-riden with 7-somes and 8-somes just about every hour of every day, especially when school is in. Summers slack off a bit since most students go "home," but are still quite busy. I'd assume that the population of Boulder would not reflect the true seasonality of its population, and therefore the area would be "degraded" (for lack of a better word)?



That's a refinement I haven't done yet. It wouldn't be difficult to run it twice, once with each total population. The student population is about 25% of the city, and 10% of the county, so my model would only change things by about that much - probably less than what you're seeing.

Anyway, who needs the model? The existing course is serving enough people for two courses, so you know you need another one. Put one on campus.

Except that the student population in Boulder probably plays disc golf at a proportionally much higher rate than the general population, so I would expect to see a greater than proportional increase.

Ahhhhhhhhhhh, now there's an interesting genre of variables to add to the model - demographic factors that inflate or deflate proclivity towards disc golf!

I've noticed that disc golfers seem to wear watches less than the average person, perhaps 1 in 20? Not sure what that means or how you could use that? Perhaps those concerned with tan lines don't wear watches. So we could "watch" for those without them for recruiting...

I'd guess either:

1. Those who have to be somewhere at a certain time don't have as much time to disc golf, or

2. Most disc golfers are young enough that they grew up carrying a cell phone as their "timepeice".

3. Hardly anybody wears a watch anymore, even non-disc golfers.

I think it would be easier to find age and sex of the population. Or, data on who wears white baseball caps and gray sweatshirts.

But seriously, I found a list of all the parks in the U.S. with lat/long (except for parks in Tulsa, for some reason). Unfortunately, it doesn't make any distinction between a National Park and a Historic Marker. No size data. Oh well, I'll keep looking.