One of Whistler’s favourite slacker activities is getting a little tighter, with a group of local disc golf players launching the Whistler Disc Golf Club.
The goal of the group is to promote the activity in Sea to Sky, maintain and upgrade the course, and create some friendly competition on the 27-hole course in Lost Lake Park. Eventually they would like to host a higher profile event like the provincial championships.
The first official club meeting is this Sunday at 1 p.m., which will be the regular meeting time through the summer. The cost is $5 to join, which covers the cost of insurance, plus a fee of $2 to enter the weekly doubles tournament. Similar to best ball golf tournaments, golfers will be teamed up with other golfers at random at the first tee, and both will play from the same spot on course.
The organizers are also putting together a bag tag challenge, where players are ranked and can challenge each other on their own time. The format is similar to a squash ladder, and there will be open and amateur categories for men and women.
As well, there are plans to hold up to two tournaments this year including a local’s event over the summer and possibly a Duck Golf Winter Series event with players from the Lower Mainland that would take place in October.
Craig McConnell, one of the founders of the club, says the aim of holding events is to make the club social, and to give players a chance to get to know each other. Any money raised from weekly doubles events will go into a bank account, and will help fund course improvements.
“We’d like to run it like WORCA, get people to put $2 into the pot each week so you have some incentive to win and have some of that money go to the club and some to the players,” said McConnell.
“We’d like to try and get a grant from the B.C. Disc Sport Society and from the municipality to fix a few boxes, add a few more long boxes and things like that.”
McConnell says the club has been welcomed by the municipality, which originally planned to host tournaments on the course when it was first built in 2003 to replace Whistler’s first disc golf course at the entrance to Lost Lake Park.
The club has a website, www.whistlerdiscgolf.com, but are still working on the content. A temporary site is at www.imagesofwhistler.com.
