No but losing discs in long grass is un-fun.
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Tall prairie Grass on DG courses
- Thread starter asjzn6
- Start date
No but losing discs in long grass is un-fun.
Bubbajoe
Birdie Member
I love the mowed fairways/long grass rough, but then I grew up in South Dakota so long prairie grass are close to my heart. What else are you supposed to do with a prairie? Leave everything long? Mowing everything is fine but it's expensive and forget about wild flower blooms and animal habitat. Having a mowed fairway brings placement and accuracy into play where other wise you'd only have open hole golf. To me complaining about the long grass on the plains is like complaining about the trees in the woods.
DBdiscgolf
Eagle Member
I agree that tall rough is bad. I won't repeat what others have already said, but I will add that unless I wear long pants it makes my legs itch like no other. And I'm sure as hell not wearing long pants in the summer.
Except that trees provide obstacles to scoring well, long grass just provides an obstacle to finding discs.
Amen! I've never lost a disc behind a tree for very long.
Spooky1
Newbie
i agree i lost a disc in the tall grass. I went right to where it landed and had five people looking for a 1/2 hour and couldnt find it. So if they could keep it at reasonable length that would be nice and the rounds would go faster since you wont spend all day looking for discs
Disc Golf Live
Eagle Member
- Joined
- Feb 28, 2009
- Messages
- 569
Tell that to someone throwing a roller.
For what it's worth, on long par-4s & par-5s, tall grass impedes the run-up too. Much easer on the closely-mown fairway than even in 1' grass, let alone 4' grass.
Environmentally and aesthetically speaking, the tall grass can be allowed to grow between basket and the next tee (with a mown trail), to either side of the tee, and along the first 100', 150', or so of fairway (depending on the course). So you can preserve some tall grass and save on mowing in places where discs rarely land---and those rare shots being bad enough that they might expect a little trouble finding the disc.
Environmentally and aesthetically speaking, the tall grass can be allowed to grow between basket and the next tee (with a mown trail), to either side of the tee, and along the first 100', 150', or so of fairway (depending on the course). So you can preserve some tall grass and save on mowing in places where discs rarely land---and those rare shots being bad enough that they might expect a little trouble finding the disc.
I'm not a fan of searching for discs in tall grass, but this concept does work. It makes open holes more interesting. Twin Rivers in Arlington, WA has a few field holes that would feel like filler without this setup, and Juel in Redmond, WA would be a waste of time without it. I'm not a big fan of Juel because it's 18 holes of throwing around a flat field, but the mowed fairways definitely make it more interesting.
I don't necessarily agree with this. I think throwing in prairie courses should make a player more conservative, especially if the grass is OB. And even if it isn't, landing in the tall grass probably means you missed your line and should have played a more predictable, safer shot. IMO it should lead to smarter golf. There are certain kinds of courses that lend themselves well to tall grass. At Sioux Passage in STL all prairie grass is OB, combine that with the big rolling hills out there and it is a great challenge. It's a pain to find discs in most cases, but I'm not going to complain about prairie grass if the landscape is naturally a prairie.
- Joined
- Aug 6, 2007
- Messages
- 4,525
If the long grass is OB, you've got to do a fair amount of mowing still to make it an attractive and fun style of golf. IMO, that kinda defeats/minimizes the purpose the premise of this discussion (saving mowing costs)
Banging Chains
Par Member
I agree with the OP Tall grass looks nice and also creates an area you don't want to land in. A great course will try and minimize luck. If all the grass is the same then it really doesn't matter as much where you land, a 100 foot shot is the same from the right side of the basket as it is from in front of it or even behind it, it's still a 100 foot shot. Tall grass makes it a litlle harder and gives the real appearance of a fairway. We have a course that had grass that stood 6 foot tall, it was hard to find/throw your disc. Risk Reward senarioro.
The landscape is a big factor in how interesting and fun a course is. I'm not going to give high marks to a course even if it maximized the available land if it's just not the kind of property conducive to the type of disc golf I enjoy. Obviously there's a set of people who enjoy prairie golf, that's great. There are a bunch of those courses out there for you to enjoy. It's not something I prefer to do, I make that clear as my own personal preference in my reviews. For me it's mostly about the time. I'm often playing a course once on a road trip, and I'm not interested in a 4 hour round to hunt down all my discs in the grass. On courses where they only mow a narrow fairway, I'm left with the choice of playing nothing but 250' putter shots down the middle and not wasting time and plastic, or going for the shots the designer created and likely missing out on another course I could have played in the time I spend wading through itchy grass.
Bubbajoe
Birdie Member
If the fairways are just one mower swath running straight to the pin, then yes, that sucks. Just like a wooded course where all the pins are 200' straight ahead of you down a four wheeler trail. That sucks too. If the woods are beat in you may spend less time searching for errant shots, but it's still monotonous, boring golf. In the end good design is going to prevail and prairie holes require it as much as wooded ones.
I'm no where near you in terms of course bagging ( but then again who is!), but I can relate to frustration of looking for discs when you're trying to maintain some sort of schedule. If you have a premium placed on time of play, then long grass really isn't going to play into that style and I totally understand that.
