STARKVILLE — “It’s definitely not mainstream, but it got the sport in front of more people than before.”
Starkville Disc Golf Association director Andy Hunt, who also owns and operates the Disc and That disc golf store, helped organize Starkville’s first-ever doubles disc golf tournament. The Double Dawg Dare 2024 event is the first of its kind for SDGA, but surely won’t be the last considering just how many people turned up to compete at Mississippi State University’s Wise Center course.
“This was our first doubles tournament and we had 106 players come out,” Hunt said. “That’s the biggest tournament in Starkville to date and the biggest as far as players registered in the Golden Triangle.”
SDGA is still just a few years old but has quickly developed a loyal membership and following.
“We started our club in August 2021 and we had 35 people show up to the first formal ‘bag tag’ that year,” Hunt said. “By the end of the year we had about 65 members, and the next year it was close to 100. It’s grown ever since the club started. There were people playing disc golf but we didn’t have a league or an association, and it’s just taken off since then.”
The sport continues to grow in the area with courses popping up across the Golden Triangle. Starkville Disc Golf Association has league play every Tuesday afternoon, Saturday morning and Sunday afternoon, and also has plans in the works to start a travel league with other leagues in the area where they’ll meet up with different associations and clubs at a different course once per month.
Columbus has three courses: Freedom Park, Propst Park and Lake Lowndes. Starkville has two 18-hole courses now at the Wise Center and Lakeside Landing and a 9-hole course at J.L. King Park – which is currently closed due to construction in the park. There are also plans for a disc golf add-on to McKee Park, and the Legion State Park course in Louisville is set to open in the coming months.
The increased attention from area clubs as well as the number of well-maintained courses has helped put the area on the map in the disc golf community, which grew rapidly in the wake of the Covid pandemic as a safe outdoor activity. The annual Dawg Daze tournament will see even more players make their way to Starkville in August, and with a record number of participants last weekend, Hunt is expecting the trend to continue.
“There was a retired couple playing the course from Hot Springs, Arkansas, last Sunday, they were in Tupelo the night before,” Hunt said, recalling an interaction after the tournament. “It had never dawned on them before to make Starkville part of their disc golf trip but they saw about the tournament and came down. They’re headed to Hattiesburg next. Three years ago that definitely wouldn’t have happened.”
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