More Gimmicks, Please!

[Gblambert]

More gimmicks! That's not something you hear very often. And rightfully so. Gimmicks on a disc golf course can reward players for lucky shots, while you want tournament winners to earn their victories with skill. Personally, I'm not a fan of gimmicks on any regular course, including those raised baskets that I see everywhere.

But on a disc golf putt-putt course, it's a different story. When we built the putt-putt course at the Flying Armadillo we used every gimmick we could find. I searched the posts on this site for the gimmicks that most players hate, and then put them on the putt-putt course. We included things like a roller ramp, a basket on top of a 10 ft tall lighthouse, a tee pad in a tree house, a basket in the ground, a hanging basket, a basket inside of an Alamo replica, and some that are so quirky they're hard to even describe. By the time we started working on the last hole, we had used up all of our good gimmicky ideas and were at a loss for a theme for hole 13.

That's when we decided to go all in by combining a bunch of gimmicks together on the same hole. So we put 4 cedar poles in the ground, hung four car hoods from them for ricochet shots, then built a slide and a grate wall to finish it off. The final structure had six gimmicks to choose from and believing it to be the most gimmicky hole anywhere, we named it the Ultimate Gimmick Hole. For those who think a hole like this is ridiculous, you'll appreciate the acronym of UGH!

Four years later and a couple of those cedar poles had been weakened by wear and weather, so our initial plan was to just replace them. Instead, since we have an abundance of poles courtesy of the local phone company, we decided to replace the cedar sticks with telephone poles. This allowed us to add more gimmicks, bringing the total up to 10. Looking at the photo below, you can see the left side has two car hoods and a ricochet board, the middle has a funnel at the top, a car hood, the grate wall, and a roller ramp, and the right side has a car hood, a slot track, and another ricochet board. Large bells and some bamboo screens were also added to catch errant throws. There's no question now that the Ultimate Gimmick Hole is just that. Also attached is a video showing aces (and near aces) on few of the gimmicks.

Next we plan to paint each of the gimmicks a different color, then add glow in the dark paint around the perimeters so each of the gimmicks can be seen while playing night golf.

Hole 13 - The Ultimate Gimmick Hole (UGH!).jpg

imagejpeg_1001002.jpg

https://youtu.be/VdOqu6t-RWI

[txmxer]

Lot of effort when all you had to do was make a smaller basket.

[teemkey]

Must add clowns.

[Gblambert]

Originally Posted by txmxer

Lot of effort when all you had to do was make a smaller basket.

Our goal was to make the hole fun, not more difficult.

[thrembo]

I think that you (op) would really like this course. Almost every hole has old carnival ride/etc features on them.

https://www.dgcoursereview.com/course.php?id=8890

[4ormal]

There's a course near me, I won't mention names, but they've sort've decide to take the route of making "gimmicks" on an already awesome course. Despite being a great course, I don't enjoy seeing my "greens fees" being applied to stuff like that. If you wanna expand and make another back 9, sure. If you wanna upgrade baskets, sure. If you wanna make treacherous unneeded obstacles on an already challenging holes, I'll go play/pay somewhere else.

[4ormal]

There's a fine line between gimmicks and art too. Not trying to sound hypocritical, but a "feature" like the Jeep Statue at The Hoot is really cool IMO. Like with everything in life, it needs to be done in moderation and with good taste. And "good taste" is where this becomes subjective.

[zontar]

needs some cats.

[Gblambert]

Originally Posted by 4ormal

There's a fine line between gimmicks and art too. Not trying to sound hypocritical, but a "feature" like the Jeep Statue at The Hoot is really cool IMO. Like with everything in life, it needs to be done in moderation and with good taste. And "good taste" is where this becomes subjective.

That is very awesome! I'm gonna have to think about something similar for hole 19.

[wellsbranch250]

Flying Armadillo Gold and Shomens, are the only two courses I've ever played where I appreciated the gimmicks.