Disc Golf World Championships Coming to Santa Cruz

The Professional Disc Golf Association's World Disc Golf Championships are coming to Santa Cruz for the first time in the history of the sport. With hard practice, and maybe a little tree-love, Chris Edwards, 24, longtime Santa Cruz local and UCSC graduate, has a chance at being dubbed disc golf's world champion right here at home.

From Aug. 7-13, Santa Cruz's Delaveaga Disc Golf Course, along with other local courses, will host some of the fiercest competition the disc world has ever seen.

A proven training ground for several world champions and hall of fame disc golfers, four Monterey Bay area courses—DeLaveaga Disc Golf Course in Santa Cruz, Pinto Lake Championship Disc Golf Course in Watsonville, The Oaks on the campus of Cal State Monterey Bay and Ryan Ranch Championship Disc Golf Course in Monterey—will host the first round action of the competition.

Semifinals will take place at DeLaveaga and Pinto Lake, and the finals will be at Pinto Lake. The tournament will also feature such fan favorites as competitions for distance and putting skill.

As many as 500 contestants are expected to enter the competition, a great many of them from outside Santa Cruz, and in addition, there will be crew, coordinators and spectators. Of course, an extra few thousand people is just par for the course for Santa Cruz in the summer. However, DeLaveaga and other area courses will have an unprecedented crowd. Volunteer-based work crews have already started to prepare the course to weather the impending heavy foot traffic.

For Edwards, disc golf is an iconic part of life in Santa Cruz, as much as the waves and sunshine. And the upcoming world championships is an opportunity for victory a long time in the coming.

He said he is confidant his knowledge of local courses will give him the upper hand against the competition. He also hopes to gain confidence from the upcoming local tournaments at the courses between now and August.

“I just need to put it all together and make sure I'm peaking at the time worlds comes around,” Edwards says.

To some people, disc golf may be lumped next to its ball-and-stick-wielding cousin as the most mundane thing in the world—an excruciatingly slow-paced, expensive, soul-consuming and masochistic game for control freaks. After all, what could be more frustrating than being forced to search thorny and poisonous foliage for a wheel of mis-thrown plastic?

Making mistakes is indeed a big part of disc golf. Searching the forest for a lost disc is an integral part of the disc golf experience. Not unlike the age-old Eskimo/ snow adage, an entire nomenclature has arisen within the sport used jokingly to describe tree deflections—including but not limited to “branchitis, treenial, and being treejected."

Tree contact is not always a bad thing, however. An unexpected bounce off a tree trunk may rescue a disc destined for a deep canyon. In such situations, the player has experienced "tree love" and may exclaim “thank you, treesus!'

Indeed, it is not uncommon to hear some pretty foul language around the forested DeLaveaga disc golf course. Penalties exist during tournament play for foul language. Edwards recommends using "alternative swears," such as "golf disc it!" rather than more traditional curses to retain good "sportspersonship."

Edwards mentors aspiring disc golfers at Harbor High School and collegiate golf at UCSC. Santa Cruz County was one of the first in the nation to have a high school league and has expanded to include Santa Cruz High and Pacific Collegiate in the past year.

"The high school league is the tip of the spear in the future of the sport," Edwards says. He says he hopes to help expand programs into local junior highs and even elementary schools.

Edwards also provides private lessons for a modest fee. He has a natural coaching ability, a skill he claims he picked up from his father, a gymnastics coach for many years.

Edwards began competing in amateur disc golf tournaments at age 17, and when he was 20, he won first place in the advanced amateur division in the Masters Cup competition held in Santa Cruz. He admits his early success was in large part because of his distance throwing ability, comparable to Tiger Woods' ability to drive long.

When he went on to join the pro divisions, the competition became much stiffer. Edwards admits that upon joining the pros, his distance throws were no longer adequate to keep the competition at bay.

However, with dedicated practice, careful study of the techniques of his peers, as well as experience playing Ultimate, a sport like football but played with a disc, Edwards has brought his performance up to the highest competitive levels in recent years. In 2010, Edwards won second-place trophies in competitions at Stafford Lake in Novato and Ryan Ranch in Monterey.

Edwards also knows what he is up against this summer. In the Nor-Cal doubles competition in October 2010, Edwards won second place against duos consisting of heavyweight competition, including Josh Anthon, Derek Billings, Greg Barsby and Patrick Brown, all of whom are expected to compete in the upcoming world championships. Edwards also won bronze in the distance competition at the World Disc Games at UCSC in 2008, close on the heels of Nate Doss and Avery Jenkins.

Despite its difficulty, disc golf has a fantastic ability to hook new players. In recent decades, the sport has experienced massive growth in popularity, with a 12-15 percent annual growth for over the past decade. This places it next to mixed martial arts as one of the fastest-growing sports in the world. There are nearly 3,000 courses in the U.S. and more than 3,000 globally.

The game is played in more than 40 countries, primarily in North America, Central and Western Europe, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

The rewards of disc golf are many, and not just for the pros like Edwards; Delaveaga is on a beautiful piece of land. The final hole of the course is aptly named "Top of the World," for it is the point of highest altitude within Santa Cruz city limits, and it is well known for its sweeping panorama of the Monterey Bay area.

Low cost along with a beautiful setting is a big part of the sports appeal. There is a $2 a day parking fee at Delaveaga, which is nothing compared with the $55-$71 fee for a tee time at to golf with balls at the Delaveaga course.

Disc golf equipment is also reasonably priced. Discs are sold new in the $10-$20 range. And perhaps most importantly, maintaining a disc golf course is far less expensive and has far less environmental impact than a ball golf course, which require obscene amounts of water and fertilizer and monopolize far more than their fair share of land, which could be put to far better use.

Some upcoming opportunities to experience the disc golf lifestyle at DeLaveaga Disc Golf course include:

26th Annual "Steady Ed" Masters Cup, May 20-22 

2011 PDGA Pro World Championships, Aug. 7-13

Monthly tournaments are the first Saturdays of the month at 9:30 a.m.

Bag Tag Challenge is every Thursday night during Daylight Savings Time; sign in by 5:15 p.m.
Weekly Random Doubles are Sundays at 9:30 a.m. Sign up by 9:20 a.m.
More info from delaveagadiscgolf.com.

To reach Chris Edwards for a disc golf lesson, visit his profile on Betterfly.com

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