Golf courses in N.L. are about to close, but disc golfers are ready to go all year long
'If you can handle being outside, you can play disc golf,' said Johnston Miller
Golfers in Newfoundland may be putting their clubs away soon, but disc golfers like Johnston Miller of Corner Brook say their fun is just getting started.
Miller, the head of Corner Brook Disc Golf, said the sport remains popular into the fall and winter because it requires little maintenance. Baskets with chains to catch flying Frisbees are installed in the ground and made to last, and some players even take to the course in snowshoes in the winter.
"If you can handle being outside, you can play disc golf," Miller told CBC News at a tee box on the Corner Brook disc golf course Tuesday.
"If there's two feet of snow, you can get out and play. Finding your discs can be a bit of an issue … but what people often do, even in the middle of the winter with that kind of snow, is just fasten some ribbons to the bottom of their disc and throw them. And then so when they go in the snow, you can easily see where they landed and kind of dig them out."
The year-round playability is a selling point for a game that is continuing to grow in western Newfoundland. The island now features five public, free-to-play disc golf courses: three in Stephenville, one in Corner Brook and one in St. John's.
The game was introduced to western Newfoundland in 2020, around the same time Miller picked up disc golf while stuck in Ontario in the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"After my first round I thought, 'This is an amazing sport, and I can't believe it's not in Newfoundland," he said. "There was already a number of people who felt the same way and had a lot of things in the works. We got together and just started to really grow in the sport in the province in the last few years."
Fifty-five disc golfers from across the province came together in Stephenville earlier this month for the second annual provincial tournament, which saw almost double the number of golfers from the year before.
Miller hopes the game will continue to grow. He says it has a lot going for it in Newfoundland — lots of open space, low equipment costs, and a desire from people to find things to do during winters on the island.
"You can play this sport with any Frisbee you have lying around the house. You can go to the dollar store and pick up a disc and play," he said.
"I feel like the sky's the limit for disc golf. It's such an accessible sport, easy to fit in with the environment. We have so much available space to kind of build something like this. People in cities are jealous of the land that we have available."
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With files from Colleen Connors
