As the year comes to a close, those in the northern hemisphere find themselves once again facing the many cold, dark hours of winter. When you play an outdoor sport like disc golf, it can be hard to get out for a round when jobs and prior obligations outlast what precious little daylight the season offers. This is especially true in the most northern latitudes where the sun goes down before 3 p.m.
But almost every player above the equator has a harder time dealing with the disc golf itch this time of year, so we went in search of ways they can scratch it.
Interesting Stats & Meet a Year-Round Disc Golfer from Norway
There are nearly 2,000 disc golf courses listed on UDisc Courses that average under seven hours of daylight during the last month of the year. Of those, 166 are in the Arctic Circle and over 50 see no sunlight at all in December. The most northerly disc golf course in the world in Svalbard — an archipelago that's a territory of Norway — sits at around 78° north latitude and is daylight-free from November through January.
But you don't have to be at that extreme to feel a big difference in daylight hours between late summer and early fall and the colder months of the year. One person who definitely notices is Sigurd Vigdel, a resident of the Norwegian municipality Sola. He's in southern Norway and well south of Svalbard but still 600 miles/965 kilometers above the most northerly point in the contiguous United States.
Vigdel has been groundskeeper for the disc golf course Ølberg Frisbeegolfbane since 2019, and he tries to keep the track playable throughout the winter and even after the sun goes down.
"Our typical winter weather is daylight from 9:00 to 16:00 [4 p.m.], 10 degrees Celsius [50 Fahrenheit], moderate to strong winds, and rain," Vigdel said.
These conditions can lead to a dark and muddy experience in the winter months, but Vigdel has done his best to prepare Ølberg for them.
"I have spent over a hundred hours a year making improvements and doing maintenance on the course," Vigdel said. "Everything from organizing dugnads, to digging ditches, adding teepads, applying for funding for equipment, and I even got Sola County to lend us a World War II bunker to store all our equipment."
For those whose Norwegian is rusty, Vigdel described a dugnad as "when volunteers show up and do a day's work with no other pay than good karma." While it can be hard to explain the difference between participating in a dugnad and simply volunteering, it was clear that the events carry a very specific cultural significance for Nowegians. It seemed, in fact, that the concept relates closely to what helps them not just persevere but thrive throughout their tough winters: A communal sense of responsibility that pushes for a better society – even if that betterment is through something as seemingly small as improving the local disc golf course.
Thanks to the improvements made during the dugnads and other efforts, the Ølberg course became very popular – even in winter.
"The traffic on our course exploded," explained Vigdel. "Although it was really fun to see so many new faces, the course really took a beating. The wet conditions from November to May made the course really muddy, and this lasted throughout the following season."
After being forced to close the course for rehabilitation the following winter, Vigdel has worked to create a nine-hole winter layout while fixes are implemented on the other half.
"Not only does this spare the ground from traffic, but we can perform maintenance on holes 2 to 10 without having to be finished the same day we start, and we don't have to worry about discs flying around," said Vigdel.
Closing a portion of the course was never ideal but Vigdel and the disc golf club are working to create a durable and sustainable course for the hordes of winter disc golfers, many of which don't have time to play during the meager daylight hours.
"There are a lot of people in this region working shifts," Vigdel said. "Oil and gas, aerospace, and police, fire, and ambulance, for instance."
Because of this, the busiest summer hours are between 4 PM and 10 PM, which leads to a difficult adaptation for those same players in winter. One answer? Playing glow disc golf.
Glow Disc Golf: Tools & Tricks
Though there are some disc golf courses with high mast lights that illuminate at least some fairways at night (e.g., Emerald Park in Mesa, Arizona, Twila-Reid Park in Anaheim, California, and Clyde Fant Disc Golf Course in Shreveport, Louisiana), most disc golf courses are too large and too wooded to light up like a normal sports field.
This is why glow-in-the-dark plastic has long been a staple in disc golf brands' lineups, and ever more equipment has come out that makes playing disc golf in the dark easier. Familiar disc golf companies like MVP, Dynamic Discs, and Infinite Discs sell disc lights as well as lightweight LED attachments that make discs even more visible than glow plastic, especially in snowy conditions.
"There is no doubt that it can be quite a challenge finding the disc as it slides underneath the snow, and it rarely lands like a helicopter on top," Vigdel said.
Playing disc golf at night is getting so popular that we even found a startup based in Birmingham, Alabama, called Disc In The Dark that's focused specifically on equipment for it. For instance, they sell lights especially for illumintaing disc golf baskets that run on USB-rechargeable batteries.
Those aren't the only basket lights out there, though. At a glow tournament Vigdel organized, they put MVP's Lunar Module LED lights on their targets. Running on three AAA batteries each, the devices create various-colored lights that are extremely atmospheric.
"Despite rough autumn weather with strong winds and some rain, we had a decent group of people with 23 players in total, and it was an enjoyable experience," a fellow member of Vigdel's club, Knut Erik Giljarhus, told us.
So enjoyable, in fact, that Giljarhus, Vigdel, and others have organized a regular glow league at Ølberg this winter – one of hundreds of glow disc golf leagues and tournaments currently scoring with UDisc Leagues.
Indoor Disc Golf Options
Of course, darkness isn't the only factor keeping many people off the course in winter – there's the cold, too. To serve those who can't imagine enjoying themselves outside in frigid temperatures, plenty of disc golf communities have come up with indoor options.
In some places, like examples from Estonia we've covered before, clubs book time in community gyms to host indoor disc golf training or disc golf stores set up training areas in parts of their shops or warehouses.
For players who like the competitive side of disc golf, winter putting leagues are a great option. Putting leagues come in various formats – indoor putting courses, competitive back-and-forth games similar to horseshoes or cornhole, and more – but they all offer fun disc golf competition that can fit in an indoor space.
One of the oldest and biggest putting leagues is in top disc golf city Charlotte, North Carolina. The event has long taken place at a local brewery, which is happy to host the crowd of thirsty patrons who have a great reason to stay there for a few hours. This tradeoff of finding a business happy to provide indoor space in exchange for a customer-attracting event has helped launch many disc golf putting leagues across the U.S. and world.
On the more epic side, there's the Indoor Disc Golf Experience, which stops in cities throughout the upper midwest. There are putting contests with obstacles like swinging baskets and inflatables, throwing challenges from balconies, and other unique uses of large indoor sports spaces. Professional players often join in, with the likes of Emerson Keith, Philo Braithwaite, and multi-time disc golf world champion Barry Schultz in recent attendance.
And if you happen to be in Little Rock, Arkansas, you can even try out a permanent nine-hole putting course set up in the disc golf shop Perks and Re-creation.
Winter Disc Golf Is Out There If You Want It
Whether you want to hone your skills or just have some fun, there are lots of ways to keep disc golfing no matter what Old Man Winter tosses your way. If you're in a disc golf hotspot, you can typically find lots of options by searching on UDisc Events for leagues, tournaments, and other gatherings happening near you throughout the season or checking with your local club.
No luck there? Well, maybe this is your call to get something going. Should you choose to answer it, we hope the examples above help inspire you to create something great.
