Disc Golf Course made for amateurs and pros alike

If you have been to the Madill City Lake in the last several weeks, you have probably noticed a lot of new strange looking metal baskets and concrete pads located in random spots on the west side of the lake. In case you don’t know what you have been looking at, those are the baskets and Teepads for the first disc golf course in Marshall County.

Being that it is located around the lake, it was named Vista del Lago “View of the Lake”. The idea of installing this course has been in the making for several years and is now a reality. The Madill City Manager, James Fullingim, offered to let the course be installed at the park and be maintained by the City once completed.

With donations from businesses and individuals of Madill, this course was able to be funded in a matter of a few weeks. Of course, there are a few more things that need to be added for the final touches but it is playable at this time.

Now, what is disc golf and how do you play? Disc golf, sometimes mistakenly referred to as Frisbee golf, is a recreational sport that is generally free to play. Modern disc golf was invented in the 60s and has been slowly becoming more and more popular over the years.

The discs used for play are relatively cheap and can be bought at Walmart, Amazon, Academy, and many other on line stores for $10 to $20 each. There are many different types of discs available with different flight characteristics.

There are drivers, midranges and even putters that you will use depending on the situation you are in and your distance from the basket. The basic rules are the same rules of ball golf including having a par for each hole – pretty simple.

You start on the Teepad and throw your disc toward the basket for that hole. Count your total number of strokes that it takes you to get the disc into the basket and write them down to determine your total final score for each hole. Add your total number of strokes for the course and compare it to overall par to see how well you played.

At Vista del Lago, things were done a little differently than on a standard 9-hole course. There are two Teepads per hole, one for amateurs and one for professional/advance players as to accommodate more playing abilities, as well as offer the option to play 18 holes.

Virtual scorecards can be kept on your phone, making it more convenient than carrying a paper score card around. This can be done on an app called UDisc – a free app and is the go-to source for disc golfers.

It shows you where all of the courses are, gives you ratings of each course and also sometimes shows you the layouts. Vista del Lago is officially on UDisc and has been GPS mapped out with layout, distance and par for each hole. It currently has a 4.3 rating out of 5 (5 being the highest) and is one of the nicest courses in Southern Oklahoma. There is now a Facebook group called Madill Disc Golf that will give players info about the course as well as a place for players to connect and talk about the game.

I am sure that a lot of you didn’t know that a Disc Golf course was in Madill until the recent Facebook post pointing out some graffiti that took place on one of the concrete pads. Although it is disheartening, it can be remedied. We just ask that everyone respect our public property as we all pay for it in the end and it takes a lot of time, money and dedication to have and keep something nice like this.

This course may have been the first project in Madill that was 100% funded and constructed by the people and surrounding businesses in the area. The City of Madill also helped out tremendously with brush/tree removal as well as helping dig the holes for the baskets.

There are still a few more things to install such as walking bridges and a big sign showing the overall course layout and all of the sponsors that will get completed soon. This article wasn’t going to be written until the course was 100% complete but we think the public needs to go try it out while the weather is still good.

There are a lot of crazy things going on in this world and we are all being asked to stay at home as much as possible. This is one sport, however, that you can play for free on your own or with people while maintaining social distancing, getting your exercise and have fun while doing so.

If you would like to donate anything to the project, the funds are being collected by the City of Madill and are dispersed as needed. If you intend to donate, please get on the Madill Disc Golf Facebook page and let one of the administrators know that you would like to donate or contact the City Manager’s office.

A special thanks goes out to all of those who were involved and donated their time and/ or money to make all of this happen. Now with all of that being said…go and see what all of the hype is about!