The Saga of a Disc Golf Course Restructure - Part 1

Ever have one of those great ideas that would have been much better had you thought of them several months previous? Well, that is what has happened here. My current home course, Terrace Creek, in Mountlake Terrace, WA, is undergoing some changes, and it would have been great for me to give a play by play as the changes happen. As it is though, inspiration has come a bit late, so I’ll do the best I can to recreate the events leading up to the present. OK, from the beginning….

To give a bit of background on our course, it is one of the older courses in the Seattle area, I believe it was installed sometime around 1992 or so. It is in place largely due to volunteer efforts; all the baskets belong to the Seattle Disc Golf Association, all the teepads were bought and installed by volunteers, and most maintenance is done by the players. The park itself is fairly large, about 57 acres I believe, but only so much of it is usable land. It is a hilly area with low lying wetlands throughout a large portion. As with many urban disc golf courses, the park is a multi-use park with a play field, playground, walking trails, and one section is adjacent to the community center known simply as the Pavilion. Due to the wetlands and property boundaries, the course is essentially split into two separate courses by about a quarter mile walk.

Here are some rough pictures of the existing layout of the course.

The Front 9:

The Back 9:


Ever since I’ve been playing at Terrace Creek (a little over 2 years now), there has been talk of us losing a couple holes (11 & 12) because of a retention pond the city will be putting in. The story has always been “it could happen any day now”, but we’ve yet to see any progress made there. About a year ago though, some citizens decided they’d like to have an off leash dog park. Unfortunately, the location they chose happened to be where two of our holes, 13 & 14, are installed. We were informed of the plans going on and about 6 of us attended a city council meeting to express our wish for the preservation of our course. Though we stated how we felt, our arguments seemed to have fallen on largely deaf ears. As it turns out, the main proponent of the dog park is married to one of the members of the city council and the plan had long been in effect before we were able to do anything about it. So we now were faced with trying to find suitable replacement holes for the two that we’d be losing to the dog park, and the two that we’d eventually be losing to the retention pond project.