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I guess it wasn't hard to find each tee at Coker. We just messed up once. I just see someone with no experience and no clue what they're looking for struggling to follow a course sometimes. When they're told, here is a frisbee and go play over there at this course.
Well if you're a local. Would you want to walk this little putter 9 hole course I'm trying to make off the square of Darlington?
I'll be in Charleston this weekend playing trophy lakes and the new wannermaker dgc, but will be back next week. Yeah, i would be interested in walking it. I am not what people would consider a pro player....pdga # 64118, i shoot around 840.
11 4-star courses, 24 3+ star courses, a bunch of school courses.....
My experience is different. Admittedly, I've only played one course you cite. But Pipeline is great, Chester, The Sarge, Tom Triplett, are all fine.....and so is Tyger River.
Perhaps it's a matter of taste. Heck, I know someone who hates John Houck courses, too.
And that's assuming that Russell Schwarz is the Innova person going to Darlington. It could be someone else.
As Brutulbus says, Darlington doesn't need genius. They're not aiming to be a world disc golf destination. They just need someone with a some experience, coming into a relatively disc-golf-free area, to avoid the major pitfalls that inexperienced designers are prone to, and to look at the land with fresh eyes.
Most people that rate courses don't take off for courses that play along and across parking lots, ball fields, and busy trails or courses that will induce erosion and future tree loss. Both of those are trademarks of Russell's "professional" designs.
I'm not asking for a high caliber, advanced level course to be built. All I'm asking is for new disc golf courses in 2017 be installed without playing over ****ing trails and roads and such. We can't progress as a game/sport if the designer from the premier equipment manufacturer is still installing courses using 1990's design standards and people are just happy to get a course b/c "bad disc golf is better than no disc golf at all."
Raise the bar, people.
And I'm pretty sure Huey and other good locals helped out at Pipeline to keep that from being goofed up.
BrotherDave? What does the brother stand for? Like hey brother. Or preacher/father/brother? What's your name? I'm Bryant Gardner. Come meet me and give me your advice, rather than bash another person here to help me.
BrotherDave you don't have a issue with a designer. I think you're misguided on that. You have a issue with Russell/innova poisoning the purity of your sport by taking jobs people like me give them.
Your anger should be at the city or landowners who give people like Russell the land to design a course on. It's not Russell or any designers fault for having to work on subpar land. In this example, it's my fault.
So let's go ahead and cross the next bridge. I can go ahead and tell you that you will not like our course. If it's possible it's going to be on 14 acres (4 less than industry standard) and we're going to squeeze in 18 holes. You probably will have one 400 ft hole. But I would assume a 160 to 300-350 is going to be your holes. So not a gold tee kinda course.
I would also assume I as a board member of a land conservation organization will mitigate land erosion as much as I can. But like any conservationist, I understand I will damage the land when I take raw land and convert it to foot traffic and public use. But in the process I just might make a couple new people have a love for nature or disc golf who didn't before they came and visited the land. So it's worth it. Just like it's worth it to me, to spend a couple 10k and fail at disk golf rather than to not try at all.
So please take your disdain for anything that's not top notch disc golf somewhere else if we can't be positive while being constructive.
I've had many people whom your forum trust say Russell's work is top notch. So I thank you for your opinion, it did make me second guess my gut. But I'm glad the people I've spoken with fully endorsed him. It made my decision to go with them even easier in the end.
Thanks Bryant Gardner 843-260-1288. Please call with any further concerns. I'd much rather discuss this in person or over a phone.
Side note. The sport will not progress at all in Darlington If any of my other council members would have came to this forum and got this response. I would assume they would just go and try another idea. It crossed my mind. So in the future if a financial backer comes and says they want to promote a sport you love. I'd suggest being like the rest of the members and Help guide him in the right direction. Not bash him and or his choice in he is contracting with. Especially when you probably would really flip out if they just went and ordered some baskets and chopped some trees down themselves to make a course... Right?
The attached website is the parcel description. It's 14.8 acres and I'm sold on trying for 18 holes. From there you can click the map and see the site. You can click roads, aerial view, measure and design holes or at least see what length of holes you could put on the land. Really hilly for SC. Go have fun and screenshot some designs. Then maybe send them to my email.. [email protected].
Anyone know how much a desig would cost? do they sit on sight while the trees are cut and paths made or do they give a design and a 3rd party cuts the holes as drawn on a the blue prints?
This land looks pretty cool. Because it is wooded, I think you could squeeze an all par 3 18 out of it based on the measurements I took from the map. I would love to come out and look at it maybe this Sunday afternoon. Let me know if you could meet me out there.
Side note. The sport will not progress at all in Darlington If any of my other council members would have came to this forum and got this response. I would assume they would just go and try another idea. It crossed my mind. So in the future if a financial backer comes and says they want to promote a sport you love. I'd suggest being like the rest of the members and Help guide him in the right direction. Not bash him and or his choice in he is contracting with. Especially when you probably would really flip out if they just went and ordered some baskets and chopped some trees down themselves to make a course... Right?
BrotherDave? What does the brother stand for? Like hey brother. Or preacher/father/brother? What's your name? I'm Bryant Gardner. Come meet me and give me your advice, rather than bash another person here to help me.
Let me introduce myself. "Brother" has a multitude of meanings not relevant to the topic (I am ordained if you need some satisfaction). My name is Dave Allen and I've been playing disc golf for but a scant decade. In that time I've played and reviewed over a hundred courses in multiple states, the popularity of said reviews earning me Diamond Level Trusted Reviewer status on this very website. I've consulted, maintained and helped install a few courses and have personally ran tournaments so suffice to say I'm not just an internet warrior mindlessly mashing away on a keyboard. I've once endured a 3 hour plus meeting with a town's park and rec because the original designer of that course did such a bad job (don't worry, this wasn't a Schwarz course but it could've been), a meeting so fruitless I wouldn't have wished it upon my worst enemy. So yeah, I take this seriously.
Bryant, I'm not bashing anybody on here. You're making wholesale assumptions that aren't substantive on anything I've posted. Mr. Sauls and I have long communicated on here and I wholly respect his opinion and was certainly not attacking anything he nor others posted. HOWEVER, his anecdotal opinion of the Schwarz designed courses that he's played in SC do not refute the anecdotal opinion of the Schwarz designed courses that I've played up in my neck of the woods. Let me reiterate this: Because Schwarz did not botch courses in one area does not mean he can't/doesn't botch courses elsewhere. There is nothing fallacious or illogical about this statement.
BrotherDave you don't have a issue with a designer. I think you're misguided on that. You have a issue with Russell/innova poisoning the purity of your sport by taking jobs people like me give them.
Your anger should be at the city or landowners who give people like Russell the land to design a course on. It's not Russell or any designers fault for having to work on subpar land. In this example, it's my fault.
Bryant, I must not have done a good job expressing myself in my previous posts because I literally have an issue with a particular designer, although my criticisms of his work in my area can be said of many other armchair DG course designers. With Mr. Schwarz it's compounded because it's literally his job. If Schwarz was a professional landscaper and he had poorly mowed many of my neighbor's yards, nobody would be upset if I didn't recommend hiring him for their yard for those reasons. But in disc golf, which is a very small world, everybody knows everybody else and cronyism runs rampant. I don't know Mr. Schwarz personally, doubt I've ever met him. I'm not saying anything bad about him as a person. All I'm saying is he has a proven track record of doing bad work on the courses in my area.
It is your fault now if you hire Schwarz (or whomever) and he does a bad job (you're in SC so there's a 75% chance he'll do okay I think, for some reason his work in central NC resembles Sherman's march to the sea). Why? Because you came on here and did something most people in your position sadly do not do: Basic research on course design and installation. That's a tremendous credit on your behalf. Not only have you done research, you've even gotten a wide range of opinions to make an informed decision. I don't blame most people that hire bad course designers because they probably didn't know any better. Sub par land? Hardly. Schwarz is capable of designing a bad course on a perfect plot of land. There was a ton of land to use for the Patriot in Triad Park for example. Lots of nice woods, elevation change, you name it. He put in a boring course with a lot of wide open field holes. That can be subjective but how about hole 1 there where the best, most logical route to play from the long tee is a hyzer over a popular walking path? That's inexcusable in this day and age, we have courses getting pulled from parks because of people getting smashed in the face with high speed drivers. Poisoning the purity of the sport? This sport hasn't come close to garnering any sort of widespread respectability and a large part of that problem is people keep putting in unsafe, poorly designed courses. Am I being that out of line to hold designers to such lofty standards as not throwing over parking lots (Hole 5 @ Rotary Park)? How about not designing a hole where a long drive could end up in a ball field (hole 6 @ Rotary Park)? Or how about not having a hole that plays alongside a tremendously popular jogging trail that all the area school teams use to practice cross country (Hole 7 @ you guessed it, Rotary Park (and this is one of his better, more recent courses))? Surely I'm exaggerating, right? That hole can't be that close to a jogging trail, right?
IT'S BASICALLY THE FAIRWAY. This pic must have been taken on a weekday AM b/c on a weekend you have to wait for several minutes for the coast to be clear. Then the basket is randomly tucked into the woods on the right with no discernible approach to "the green."
So let's go ahead and cross the next bridge. I can go ahead and tell you that you will not like our course. If it's possible it's going to be on 14 acres (4 less than industry standard) and we're going to squeeze in 18 holes. You probably will have one 400 ft hole. But I would assume a 160 to 300-350 is going to be your holes. So not a gold tee kinda course.
Again, you've not read what I wrote correctly, I'll take the blame for that. I'm not a Gold tee player. I could not care less what kind of course you put in here as long as it is good for somebody. Courses that endanger people and rundown the environment needlessly are not good for anybody. You've got 14 acres on a relatively narrow plot of land, just eyeballing the map and assuming the complex of buildings is a no-go zone, you've probably got potential for a really good 9 hole course, assuming you want to avoid really awkward, long walks in places. 18 holes? Eh, they're most like going to be on the shorter side, a Red level course at best I guess. I'm not saying that's a bad thing, people are more likely to come play an 18 hole course than a 9 hole one and even short courses can be fun. Darlington is a DG desert so a recreational, beginner friendly course is a great idea to get the area locals hooked and hungry for more. But at the risk of sounding repetitive, all I care about is not seeing another park get burned and end up with a course that is either unsafe, unpopular, or worst of all both.
I would also assume I as a board member of a land conservation organization will mitigate land erosion as much as I can. But like any conservationist, I understand I will damage the land when I take raw land and convert it to foot traffic and public use. But in the process I just might make a couple new people have a love for nature or disc golf who didn't before they came and visited the land. So it's worth it. Just like it's worth it to me, to spend a couple 10k and fail at disk golf rather than to not try at all.
That's fantastic and I love to hear that. As such, I hope that you will be able to avoid doing things like the green of hole 6 at NE Park where professional, Innova Disc Golf Course designer Mr. Schwarz put the basket on a narrow finger of sloped land and its soft, sandy soil that is eroding away as we speak. If this was an actually popular course, the basket anchor would be exposed by now and the basket likely leaning. This issue is compounded by where the transition to the next tee is located: Directly uphill from the basket. The compacted soil of this footpath created a new water fall line that falls directly into 6's green to contribute more erosion. Fortunately, this can be mitigated by a water bar but the green will still need fairly substantial soil retention barriers installed to preserve the nature of the green and keep it from turning into a sheer, eroded slope. This isn't even the worst green at this park, later Mr. Schwarz installed 9 more holes for the advanced course. His hole 8's green is a very picturesque green with the basket among very large quartz boulders. The problem is that barely beyond the 10 meter circle of this basket is a substantially steep slope of rocky soil that gives away easily. I'm a young male adult of generally good physical condition and I have to get on all fours to traverse this slope, very carefully because one misstep or slipped hand-hold can result in a tumble of 20-35' into boulders and/or a large creek. Fortunately, No one plays this hole (they can't, there's no fairway and numerous people have personally complained to me about it and said they gave up coming to this course). Here's one more Schwarz-centric example off the top of my head that is typical of poor understanding how nature works:
Here's hole 8 at Creekside (one of the better courses thanks to the locals). Notice how the left side of the tee has dirt creeping on it? That's because the transition from the previous basket is immediately uphill from it, creating another new water fall line that covers the tee in dirt every time it rains. If memory serves right, this tee was originally poorly installed to boot, severely listing left to right so you felt like you were drunk trying to tee off. Fortunately somebody leveled this and the other wonky tees. In the grand scheme of things, stuff like this isn't a huge deal. Some volunteers do this out of the goodness of their heart? Forgivable. But this is work Mr. Schwarz presumably was paid for. There should be higher standards. I will say that I don't 100% blame everything I find fault with on his courses on Russell. Stuff like this can easily happen because a park worker or local DGer can mess up Mr. Schwarz' directions during final touches and he can't be everywhere all the time.
So please take your disdain for anything that's not top notch disc golf somewhere else if we can't be positive while being constructive.
I'm trying to be positive and constructive here, I really am. I hope it comes across this time.
I've had many people whom your forum trust say Russell's work is top notch. So I thank you for your opinion, it did make me second guess my gut. But I'm glad the people I've spoken with fully endorsed him. It made my decision to go with them even easier in the end.
No doubt, like I said before disc golf is a small world and I'm sure you'll find many of his friends and acquaintances that think he's a nice guy and wouldn't say an ill word about him. This is technically cronyism at its finest and the DG world is rife with it. As a tangent I've personally seen a PDGA state coordinator write a letter of recommendation and lip service for one of his buddies stating that this buddy was greatly qualified to redesign a course and that his redesign was a good one. This state coordinator admitted to me that he had never been to this park and was therefore unqualified to make such a statement. This buddy stated in an email that had he been the original designer, he wouldn't have put as many as 18 holes because the park is so full of ball fields. A couple paragraphs later in the same email, the same buddy said that his solution to redesign the unsafe, conflicting course is to (contradictorily) add more holes to the existing 18 holes. Ipso facto, this course in question is still rife with issues related to the original design and no one will be the wiser until the folks running the softball league get tired of distance drivers noob hyzering next to the outfielders or a soccer mom gets a driver to the back of the head while watching her 8 year old center-forward.
You can do what you want to do and regardless I wish you the best, I truly do. I have no idea why you got so defensive with me and again I apologize if the tone of my previous posts misled you. My passion bucket for disc golf is bottomless so I hope you do not easily dismiss my assuredly qualified opinion as some random internet guy being "a hater." But I will not apologize for wanting parks to get what they pay for when they have a course designed and installed and for having a basic level of standard for courses that goes beyond simply having baskets and tees. If you decide to go with Innova and Mr. Schwarz it "neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg" because I don't expect to live near Darlington anytime soon. To reiterate one last time, I just desire that you thoroughly check up on the design and installation of your course so that it is a good, fun, and safe course, regardless of the architect. You have all the tools and resources at your disposal with this site alone to do this, make sure you get your money's worth. If I ever get a free weekend I might ring you up one day to meet you out there but if I haven't made my point yet in this regrettably massive post I am a lousy communicator. Thanks again for doing your due diligence.
Wishing you good luck with utmost sincerity,
Dave
You can thank me later if Mr. Schwarz ever runs across this b/c I might have just given you the best gift I could have: Schwarz actually trying to do a great job just to spite me. I hope he spites the crap out of me.
Side note. The sport will not progress at all in Darlington If any of my other council members would have came to this forum and got this response. I would assume they would just go and try another idea. It crossed my mind. So in the future if a financial backer comes and says they want to promote a sport you love. I'd suggest being like the rest of the members and Help guide him in the right direction. Not bash him and or his choice in he is contracting with. Especially when you probably would really flip out if they just went and ordered some baskets and chopped some trees down themselves to make a course... Right?
Welcome to disc golf but disregard negative people on this site and definitely sway others trying to do something positive for your community to stay away from the site. The negative mentality unfortunately with some new players as well as some older ones is rampant on the site. There are lots of good people in the sport but once you have been around the sport longer you will occasionally have to deal with golfers that will torpedo anyone they dislike or do not agree with. Not all but some negative people in the sport truly have no life outside of the sport and polarize this with there negative attitudes and lack of social skills. I have never understood why these people cannot afford to buy land and design a private course instead of bashing others that have social skills and financial capabilities to actually do something positive. Russell designed Pipeline in Spartanburg which is the best course in SC other than Langley Pond in addition to designing or co-designing numerous other great courses like Sargeant Jasper Park, Chester, Easley and Fox Chase. Russell, Harold, Zeb and everyone else at Innova are good people and will do what is right for you and your community. Good luck going forward.
First off let me say you are a amazing communicator. I think I made some baseless assumptions on some parts as it relates to you and others parts I feel I have reasoning. But you seem to be a reasonable person so I'll save that philosophic conversation on how to get a end result for another day.
If you would have started out with the explanations of your why behind your reasoning, I would have formed a totally different opinion. In my annoyance with the haters of the world and getting 1-5 complaints a day.. I have a simple philosophy i like to employ where I can. if you have a problem, give me a solution.
You just showed me some great examples(solutions) of what you don't like. And I don't like erosion that goes into my streams. So I'm now more educated on a area I need to pay attention to and common pitfalls relating to disc course design.. So thank you so much.
From my limited understanding of the design process. Russell will come in here this Tuesday and walk the property. A design will then be done. At that point Innova(russell) will then tape and mark out on the land. And THEN WE will be in charge of getting someone to come clear the marked land.
It sounds like once the design is done. I could send it by this site and get you all to give me some opinions. Then we can send it back. Once we finalize it. We will get it marked on the property. At that point, if the administration of this site or members want to elect a group of people from the area to come help me inform my opinion or suggestions. I'm eager for the support and help.
BUT I have no clue how to tell a valid experienced opinion from someone like myself who values their opinion, but on this subject of design has no relevant experience.
If you and or others want to help with this. I believe Russell would be happy for our input. But I know I would and since I am helping lead this endeavor. So I see no issue with me getting a informed opinion with yalls help.
^ If your Parks and Rec has a dedicated arborist, I might suggest inviting him/her along on the official design walk through. It certainly helped us get the P/R and CC folks on board.
I would consult the arborist BEFORE any trees are permanently marked as their input would be invaluable and might save you grief down the road. We weren't permitted to remove any trees without his approval.
To the rest of the people replying. Thank you so much for your responses. I'm taking note of them all and will take them into consideration.
I went to school in Spartanburg. So it sounds like I need to take a visit to Wofford under the guise of community disc golf research... And see these courses in the upstate.
