what city or metropolitan area has the least amount of courses per person?

which has the most??

based on metropolitan areas over 1 million my best educated guess based on the number of courses I know off hand would be:


least = San Fransico

most = Minneapolis (?)

least has got to be NYC with zero courses and the most people.
DC has zero as well.
san fran has golden gate so it is out.

a lot depends on how you define metropolitan area.

There is one 20 hole course in NYC. Prospect Park in Brooklyn.

Louisville has about 1 million metro, and has 2 courses.

San Diego is on the low side for cities that have at least one course.

Although NYC does have Prospect Park, it is an object course...no baskets.

which has the most??

(?)

Doubt we have the most, but we are doing pretty good.

There are about 100,000 people in San Angelo and we have 72 "public" holes as of now. Plus the Air Force base has an 11 hole course, so there is 83 total. Plus one of the elementary schools has an 18 hole object course, though not very well marked. So it would be almost impossible for someone to find their way around it with out a school kid to show you.

So I guess it could be said we have 101 holes?

Almost 1 hole for every 1000 people...that's a big card!!!!

China: 1.33 billion people, zero courses.

Although NYC does have Prospect Park, it is an object course...no baskets.

not a course imo.

Bowling Green, KY probably has the highest number of holes/courses for smaller cities under 1 million. Of course Highbridge. WI has about twice as many holes (~90) as people (~43).

JB,

With much appreciation to the work that the Brooklyn guys have done (to help the greater NYC-area dg scene and put up / maintain that course), I agree with you...I'm not a "fan" of non-basket courses either (didn't grow up in / with the "target golf era" and am not a fan of throwing discs at trees).

Karl

Ps: Even though I'll go to my grave saying that we (dg) have the weirdest "targets" (end-points) of any sport I know.

Philly has a population of 1.54 million people and 5.8 million in the greater metro area, but only has one course with Sedgley woods.

I would give the crown to New York City. Over 19 million people and only one course within 20 miles of it's downtown. And that course is an object course.

San Diego is probably second with 3 million people and two courses (28 holes total) within 20 miles of downtown.

Both of these cities, being coastal cities, don't have the luxury of having 360 degrees of neighboring towns to host nearby courses, compared to for example, Kansas City or Minneapolis. San Diego, in fact, really only has 90 degrees of radius, when you consider its proximity to Mexico.

All of this, however, is open to argument, depending on how you define the question. When you count population are you only looking at the city itself, or it's metro area? And which courses do you include? Courses in the city itself, in the metro area, or within some radius of the city center?

Here's a question for you - how far of a radius around a city should we draw? What's a reasonable distance to drive to call a course "in the city?"

Even though the Twin Cities has the most courses within a half hour of the interstate loop that encircles the metro (35-40 courses), there is just one 9-hole course within the official city boundaries of Minneapolis and just one 9-holer in the St. Paul city boundaries.

You shouldn't look at just the city limits, IMO you need to look at the Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA), which typically consists of selected counties in a given area. For instance, the Dallas-Ft Worth MSA has 12 counties; additionally, it is abutted by another MSA and 5 Micropolitan SAs.

But to call a course "in the city" is a pretty subjective term. The "Big 4" counties in DFW (Dallas, Tarrant, Denton and Collin) have 2 courses, McKinney Towne Lake, and Ft Worth ZBoaz, that are a shade under 55 miles from each other, per DGCR.

JB,

Ps: Even though I'll go to my grave saying that we (dg) have the weirdest "targets" (end-points) of any sport I know.

Perhaps, but I suspect if you showed a basketball goal to someone who'd never seen or heard of the sport, it'd be close. Though I doubt anyone'd try to use it as a grill.

*

To me, the best measure of the city/courses definition would be courses within, say, 30 minutes of the city limits. That's a course that at least some people living in the city can get to on a reasonable drive.

The statistical metropolitan areas are authoritative but not readily at hand. An, in examples I know, they can incorporate some pretty large areas---areas where the residents don't consider themselves connected to the particular city.

David and Bill - I have considered using MSAs to define this question, but I tend to agree with David's point (and it may be yours as well Bill?) that the MSAs are just too darn big. I have a GIS layer file of MSA boundaries and one of major city boundaries, so answering the question using either of those two measurements is no problem. I can even draw 10 or 30-mile buffers around them and do it that way.

Of course, the flip side of it is that if the MSA is geographically large, it will also be encompassing a lot of population, so a calculation of people per course or people per basket would be fair no matter the size of the city. That may be the best way to answer the question.

David and Bill - I have considered using MSAs to define this question, but I tend to agree with David's point (and it may be yours as well Bill?) that the MSAs are just too darn big. I have a GIS layer file of MSA boundaries and one of major city boundaries, so answering the question using either of those two measurements is no problem. I can even draw 10 or 30-mile buffers around them and do it that way.

Of course, the flip side of it is that if the MSA is geographically large, it will also be encompassing a lot of population, so a calculation of people per course or people per basket would be fair no matter the size of the city. That may be the best way to answer the question.

A few more insights like that and you'll end up with my formula for Service Levels.

Oh, and the place that needs the most new courses is Miami, where a new course would serve 1.9 million people, followed by New York (actually, just into NJ) 1.6 million, and then San Diego 1.3 million. To put it in perspective, a course that serves 120,000 people is pretty much full all the time.

Here's a map. Anywhere on this map that has even the slightest tint of blue could fill up a new course. There's more at my website www.stevewestdiscgolf.com. You might be interested in the "By County" section of the Service Levels pages. http://stevewestdiscgolf.com/ByCounty.aspx

Nice map! Shows off Texas DG - despite being two of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, DFW and Houston have hues that are typical of much smaller metro areas!

I am curious as to where you got the stat of 120K persons/course capacity.

Nice map! Shows off Texas DG - despite being two of the largest metropolitan areas in the country, DFW and Houston have hues that are typical of much smaller metro areas!

Yep, there's a lot there. I have DFW as 4th on my list of areas with a lot of targets (with 567), and Houston as 19th with 374. Don't forget Austin at 17th with 393.

I am curious as to where you got the stat of 120K persons/course capacity.

Calling it a statistic is giving it too much credit. It started as estimating how many players could play per hour, for so many hours per day, etc. to get the total number of players a course could handle in a week, then dividing that by the percent of the population that would play in any given week.

However, I later calibrated my formula so that my Demand figures would produce a meaningful Availability figure. The busiest courses have an Availability of about 10% (which means that a player would play the course 10 times as often if it wasn't busy). It turns out that there seems to be a natural cap on the demand on a course, because as it gets more busy, players start to prefer to go to other courses. The highest Demand I have calculated for an existing course is 66,543.

[A hypothetical course in China might have a higher Demand figure, but there isn't anywhere in the U.S. where there are a lot of people and only a single course within a day's drive.]

So, to be conservative, I just about doubled the highest Demand I've seen and stuck with my old estimate of about 120,000 population as the number of people it takes to keep a course busy.

On the Demand graph on my website (not the one attached here), I've set the colors to show all the places where demand is twice that high (240,000) to be even more sure that the area could keep a course busy.

A few more insights like that and you'll end up with my formula for Service Levels.

Oh, and the place that needs the most new courses is Miami, where a new course would serve 1.9 million people,

But still it is the only city in the state of FL that has 2 courses in 1 park. 2 18 hole courses at Kendall Indian Hammocks Park!

Kendall 1(East) is my BABY!

The other one has changed a few times with construction since my original design and only about 10 of the 18 holes are from the start.

Orlando has both Turkey Lake Park and Barnett Park, each with 2 18-hole courses.

Happened after 2001 when I left the state so it doesn't count for me - so now then I'll have to pull out the FIRST and ONLY city in the state with 2 courses in the same park to host a World Championship. (and still the ONLY park with 2 until 2006) :)

A trendsetter! Definitely way ahead of your time.

There are a suprising number of multi-course facilities now, but I suspect there weren't any within a day's drive at the time. As far as I can think, Burlington, NC would have been the closest.

Turkey Lake is really recent---the second course perhaps in the last 2 years?

We have around 195 holes in the greater Des Moines area (30 mile radius), with a population around 500,000.

Don't get China started....

A trendsetter! Definitely way ahead of your time.

There are a suprising number of multi-course facilities now, but I suspect there weren't any within a day's drive at the time. As far as I can think, Burlington, NC would have been the closest.

Turkey Lake is really recent---the second course perhaps in the last 2 years?


Cedarock and Wellspring were my inspiration for the 2 different types of courses at Kendall.

I played them when the 1996 AM Championships got moved from Boylan Farms after everyone had signed up.

They were in a beautiful park, and one day i'll have to go back and wee how they have changed in 15 years time.

Regarding Turkey Lake - according to the directory it was installed in 2006 (which is why I referenced that year in my post) Barnett 2nd was probably around the same time, as it wasn't there when I played Barnett in 2004 before the 4 hurricanes came ripping through Florida like a big X across the middle of the state.

I calculated how many people live closer than the nearest disc golf course (for every census tract). The four "mountain peaks" are:

Glen Cove, NY 9,897,962
Los Angeles, CA 3,571,005
Belmont, MA 3,238,445
Redwood City, CA 2,662,640

A map of the lower 48 is here: http://stevewestdiscgolf.com/Demand.aspx (at the bottom of the page).