The winding road to New York City's first disc golf course started with a bike ride.
That's how Alex Bender, an Aurora, Colorado, native who moved to Brooklyn in late 2021 after a year of disc golf-filled cross-country road-tripping, first met Alex Hoyle, an Arkansas transplant who had arrived in the Big Apple in 2019.
Besides a name, the two also shared a passion for disc golf and longed to bring a permanent course to New York City and its roughly 8.5 million people. But before they crossed paths, they were taking different journeys as they tried to achieve that goal.
For Hoyle, it came in the form of community building. He had started the Brooklyn Disc Golf Club, which organized "field trips" to courses outside the city limits and hosted a weekly pop-up course in the city's 526-acre (213-hectare) Prospect Park.
Bender, meanwhile, was on a mission of "cold calls and bold reachouts," as he put it, aiming to interface with officials from the NYC Parks Department. Using a well-polished presentation that included data cultivated from UDisc, the PDGA, and other sources, he aimed to pitch a course to whoever would listen. He'd also started conversations with the Paul McBeth Foundation, the namesake charitable organization founded by the six-time world champion whose mission is to help bring disc golf to underserved areas.
On a late winter weekend in early 2023, Bender was exploring the city on two wheels and ventured into Prospect Park. That's where he found Hoyle and a small, but dedicated group of other disc golfers walking toward their upshots and getting ready to hole out on their makeshift course.
"Out of the corner of my eye I see someone with a disc golf basket set up and like four people walking up toward it finding their layup shots," Bender recalled. "And I was like, 'No way! There's other disc golfers in the city?'"
The two exchanged contact information, and the momentum grew. The duo quickly broadened their horizons, rebranding to the New York City Disc Golf Association (NYCDGA) and achieving 501(c)(3) non-profit status as they sought to appeal to a wider potential player base.
"It really kind of felt like fate in some ways," Hoyle said. "We were both tackling the same issue from different perspectives – both of them essential to getting the job done at the end of the day."
That day is today: New York City's first permanent disc golf course was just installed in Highland Park. Situated right between Brooklyn and Queens, the park now hosts 10 holes not just for the existing disc golfers of the NYCDGA, but also for the 5 million residents of those two boroughs. And while it's a momentous occasion, it's also very much just the beginning.
"Is the map rendering?"
Until now, New York City has been a disc golf desert. The area ranked as the #1 large U.S. city for disc golf opportunity in UDisc's Disc Golf Health Index, meaning it represented the urban area with the highest population that was not being served with enough courses. It becomes the fourth largest city in the world to welcome the sport, behind only Shanghai, Beijing, and Tokyo.
And while city dwellers have access to 53 other courses within 50 miles, the closest two of those have fewer holes combined than Highland Park does: One, which is still 20 miles away at Roselle Park High School, has only five baskets; the other is described on UDisc as "four practice holes."
"I remember in my first couple weeks [of living here] looking on UDisc and seeing if there was anything around, and it zoomed into to where I was and it was empty," Bender said. "I was like, 'Is the map rendering?' I started zooming out, and the first basket I see is like 30 miles away. I was like, 'Oh, damn. OK.'"
Hoyle had a little more time in the city to find some success getting to a course, but his easiest trek was to the 3.8-rated 18-holer at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, which still required 45 minutes on public transit before a 25-minute walk across the city. That scratched the itch to throw, but it hardly provided the social experience he had come to crave from the sport.
"I didn't realize how much of a disc golf desert it was," Hoyle said. "I started looking for clubs in the city, events to go join, and there wasn't much of anything at all."
Combine that with many New Yorkers' reliance on public transportation – neither of the Alexes has a car, with Bender selling his disc golf van conversion the same day he moved into his Brooklyn apartment (no word on which one has more square footage) – and it's easy to see why the NYCDGA came to be.
"I feel like we both had gears turning at the time before we met of like, OK, there's no community here, and I really want this community to be here," Hoyle said.
That was the impetus for the Prospect Park pop-ups. Hoyle found the "one little nugget" of community on a semi-defunct Facebook group that local disc golfers had used to coordinate rides to courses outside the city, and he posted his first event there. A few players showed up, which eventually grew the gathering into a small club that held more events.
Fast forward to today, and NYCDGA events have included over 250 unique participants, with more than 40 now counting themselves as paying members. The group has hosted pro tournament watch parties, putting leagues, and disc dyeing events in Central Park – all before there was even a course in city limits.
Making the pitch
By the time the Alexes met, Bender had already made some headway with NYC Parks, exchanging several emails and even snagging an in-person meeting as he sought to convince decision-makers that disc golf was an essential activity that New York was missing. While it wasn't always easy being passed from one potential lead to the next, it helped him refine his pitch and hone in on what was most important.
The first step, always, was education.
"That's something that throughout this whole process has been a complete constant, is you can almost assume the person you're talking to has not heard of disc golf before," Bender said. "I think in a lot of the UDisc readership, and in the disc golf bubble, we know disc golf is growing a lot worldwide…
"If you live near Emporia, Kansas, every single person knows what disc golf is even if they don't play. In New York City, in my experience, you can flip that," he continued. "Even though disc golf is growing so much, still so many people here have no awareness of what it is."
After the education component, Bender and Hoyle espoused disc golf's broad-ranging appeal for all ages, activity levels, and more.
"Some of the things that resonate most is how disc golf is truly for the everyday person," Bender said. "It's completely accessible from a financial perspective, from an ability perspective and, soon, from a physical location perspective for many people."
To that end, the NYCDGA has already been interfacing with the community surrounding the new course, which includes a YMCA and an NYC Parks Recreation Center. Since November, the club has been hosting monthly community days at Highland Park as a soft introduction to the sport, and Bender and Hoyle present regular updates to the local community board – a crucial audience, given that the course was approved as only semi-permanent: It's operating as a one-year pilot project that will need to demonstrate value to the surrounding neighborhood, not just disc golfers.
Even without baskets in the ground, though, it's already doing just that.
"The quote I'm remembering from our last community board meeting was one of the board members was really excited about getting kids outside and being active – the whole health element of the sport," Hoyle said. "It seemed like what really resonated was that it's something that's healthy for their kids to do and that's positive for kids to be engaged in."
It's a testament to the power of community building – no course required.
Paul McBeth Foundation goes big for the Big Apple
Still, as a nascent enterprise the NYCDGA needs support. Even with a growing number of paying members and a thriving Discord community, in a city of millions it can always help to have some bigger names behind a project.
That's where the Paul McBeth Foundation (PMF) comes in.
PMF raises funds, connects with industry sponsors like Discraft to donate baskets and equipment, and sends staff to oversee designs and teach local stakeholders how to water the proverbial seeds so that disc golf can continue growing once they leave. The organization's strongest currency, though, is credibility: By backing a project, the foundation offers an extra element of legitimacy that can be a key factor in getting buy-in from city officials. In just four years of existence, PMF has already made a tremendous impact on disc golf, helping to install nearly 20 courses and cultivate communities in 20 different countries.
Among many tall tasks the organization tackles, they put extra emphasis on finding those motivated disc golfers who live in the community – project drivers, in PMF parlance – who they can trust to take ownership of a project. And that's why the partnership with NYCDGA has made so much sense.
"We have had quite a few people reach out about putting a course in New York City – people have wanted it to happen for a long time," PMF Director of Operations Zach Smith said. "Without key people in the local community who wanted to see it come to fruition, it wouldn't be a reality…Bender and Hoyle were the vehicle to getting the course approved, and then we support them on the financial and logistics side. They wouldn't have been able to do it by themselves, and in turn we wouldn't have been able to do it without them."
And since this project represents such a watershed moment in disc golf – again, this is the first disc golf course ever in North America's second-largest city by population – PMF is going even bigger than usual. The charity has organized a two-day grand opening celebration from June 14-15, complete with speeches from Paul McBeth and PDGA Executive Director Doug Bjerkaas, a clinic from top pro disc golfer and PMF ambassador Missy Gannon, an Ace Race, and more.
"Being able to introduce disc golf to a community of nearly 9 million people is so much bigger than what we've ever been able to be a part of," Smith said. "We've worked in cities, we've worked in other locations, but this feels so much bigger and leaves future possibilities for other courses on the table, as well."
Making disc golf "radically more approachable"
But don't worry, dear reader: You don't have to wait until June to experience disc golf in New York City. Highland Park is available for play now (or, if you're not in the area, it's wishlist-able). So what should you expect when you get there?
A bucolic park setting? Check.
Shorter holes to appeal to new players? Of course.
A mix of open and wooded holes? Correct.
"It's such a beautiful and pastoral landscaped park and it's still interesting enough for seasoned players," Bender said. "There's elevation changes, there's really beautiful, mature trees…It's in the area of the park that generally has the least amount of foot traffic, or what is the least utilized area of the park. However, it's not just in its own woodsy area. It's in patches of grass that are bordered by walking paths, so it's absolutely discoverable by other parkgoers."
A Great Depression-era stone bridge dots the scenery – you won't throw from it, but it'll be in view – a highlight structure that Bender said he hopes disc golfers will appreciate as part of the park's history. And in keeping with the theme of city course, hole 1 is closest to the nearest public transit stop – instead of the parking lot.
"When we were proposing the idea of disc golf in New York City, the first step was we did a lot scouting out of different parts of the city and created a short list [of potential courses] and rank-ordered the short list based on a lot of different factors. One of those factors was transit accessibility," Bender said. "The park the course is going in was actually the top of the list in regard to transit accessibility and the top of our short list for what would be a good first course for New York City."
While that accessibility is important, Highland Park is still very much a first step in New York City's disc golf journey. After all, the combined population of Brooklyn and Queens is roughly the same as the entire country of Finland, which boasts more than 1,000 disc golf courses. And that doesn't account for Manhattan (1.65 million), The Bronx (1.45 million), and Staten Island (493,000).
That's why the NYCDGA is already scoping out locations for its next course, whether it comes in the form of a municipal golf course crossover, a state park, or even private property. While that may sound daunting to those outside of the area who only think of the Big Apple in terms of bright lights, bridges, tunnels, and skyscrapers, there's actually quite the canvas for disc golf to grow.
"This misconception people have about New York City is that there's no green space here," Bender said. "A lot of people know Central Park worldwide, but Central Park is actually the fifth largest park in New York City. There's a lot of other parkland in the city that would be phenomenal for courses, and we've done a lot of that scouting work already."
The foundations of a community are already in place thanks to Hoyle's early efforts. Bender brought a dogged determination and persuasive presentations. Once they merged those strengths, it was only a matter of time before they got their first opportunity. And at the same time, opportunity is still all that lies ahead of the NYCDGA: Even with the course, New York City will still rank #1 on UDisc's Opportunity Index for large U.S. cities.
"In my mind, this is definitely only the beginning of our path to continue to be the home of disc golfers in the city and to make disc golf radically more accessible and approachable for people," Bender said. "We're going to continue to try and get more and more courses."
One down, 999 to go.
Connect with the New York City Disc Golf Association at nycdga.org or by sending a note to [email protected]. To support the Paul McBeth Foundation's mission, consider joining the Builders Club or contributing a one-time donation.
