City adds first disc golf in 20 years

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Folks in Austin who love their disc golf now have a new place to play the game just east of downtown, along the eastern edge of Lady Bird Lake.

Austin's Parks and Recreation Department has been working on the Guerrero Park disc golf course, just off Pleasant Valley Road, for more than a year. Players say the course has something for eveyrone.

"This is a well-designed championship course," said Jordan Maxim-Kelley, president of the Waterloo Disc Golf Club. "It's got a lot of long par holes, but it's got shorter tee pads for beginner courses, so it should be a good course for everyone."

This is Austin's fifth disc golf course. It replaces the Pease Park course, which was closed almost two yeras ago to prepare for water quality improvements to Shoal Creek. Many consider it a milestone, as the first new course planned and built in the city's parks in nearly two decades.

Guerrero Park was best known as a stopover for transients and make-shift campers. In the process of creating the new course, developers hauled off hundreds of pounds of trash but kept a lot of "nature's leftovers" to give the course a countryside feel.

"We wanted to be thoughtful and not fill up our landfills," said Cheryl Bolyn of the Parks and Recreation Department. "We took a lot of the debris we could and integrated it into the golf course itself."

That means that intentional pathways were created by using mulch from dead brush and trees. Bricks and stones pulled from the site were used to create sitting areas for the players.

Saturday's grand opening included music, food and games, with funds raised going to the Montopolis Little League and Disc Golf Experience.