Life of the Par Tee: Hello to you both! Looking back at the 2024 Limber Open, how do you feel the tournament went overall?
Taylor Jeffels: Considering the scope, going through the city with everything we had to do, creating a course and implementing it, and the red tape that was involved, I’d say it was a total success!
LotPT: So, why a temporary course and not one of the existing courses? Was it just the challenge of doing it, or were there factors that made you choose that over an existing course?
TJ: There were a couple of influences. We were lucky enough to get the interest of Gian-Carlo Carra, who is a big advocate for disc golf, and Elliston Park is in his ward... he brought us out to see his vision. Also, Blake from Cold Garden was a huge advocate. He lives on
the east side, and has been dreaming of putting together a course for Elliston for a while. There’s not another course within the city limits that gives us what we found at Elliston.
LotPT: How did you pick the locations for the holes? Was the layout obvious right away, or did it take some work to map it out?
Alex Penney: Taylor, Blake and I went out and walked all of Elliston and really just looked at some spaces, like: “Hey, this would be a cool shot, maybe we can put a hole here?” After throwing some discs, we were able to map out potential holes. We had some contingency plans in the event that we needed to tweak the layout, and there was a moment there where it looked like we might’ve had to...
LotPT: Oh no! What happened that almost forced you to have to change the layout?
TJ: On the Wednesday before the tournament, the City notified us that we wouldn’t be able to shut down the park, because they didn’t have enough time to prepare the public. We had actually put in our proposal two months earlier! So we were like, “We have 215 players coming to play this on the weekend, what are we going to do?” And so, shout-out to Gian-Carlo once again. These are the city workers, and they’re just doing their job, so I don’t blame them at all. They want to help, but can’t. I mes- saged Gian-Carlo with that and within 28 minutes he had sent me an email back that said; “Solved.” So, without his help, that would’ve been a bit of a disaster. We had to just dance between these two different parts of the city, and I think they just got crossed. So he spoke to them, and then they had signs coming in, and roadblocks in place, so once they got the word from up above that they could do it, they were like: “Great, let’s do this properly!” So that was the almost fall-through-the-ice moment... I would’ve just run and jumped into the center of Elliston Lake. (laughs)
LotPT: Speaking of the lake, an email went out before the tournament warning us not to go into the water to retrieve discs. What were the challenges with the water?
AP: The water itself is stormwater drain-off. The city was doing its due diligence because it is beside a landfill, and warned us about the presence of hydrocarbons and hypodermic needles and that if discs go in there — if they were retrievable — to sanitize them, and not take their disc out of the water and then lick their fingers. (laughs)
TJ: That meant we had to deal with another department of the city to get permission. They wanted a count of how many discs were going into the water, and how many were retrieved... they were asking for a retrieval plan, and then they recognized that was not feasible.
LotPT: What were some of the other challenges of designing a course from scratch?
AP: I think it was just making sure the flow of the course made sense. Most people weren’t going to have the opportunity to play the course in advance, so making sure it was fair, and challenging, but not too punitive. If we had the opportunity to have Elliston closed for a couple days before, we could have made some tweaks that would have made the course more challenging. But it was an open public use park, so we were out there pulling around a basket with a rangefinder to figure out how to make this an enjoyable experience for the players while also not disturbing the public too much.
TJ: I think the biggest challenge was the number of steps that Alex put in. (laughs)
AP: Yeah, in the 30 days before the tournament it was about 750,000 steps. It is a long loop around the course.
LotPT: Was there any thought given to having a certain number of water carries or elevation changes as you were designing the layout?
AP: I don’t think we picked a number in our head. We just wanted to showcase the features of Elliston Park and to get people excited about playing there, and to encourage them after the event to call 311, to write their local councillor, and to express their enjoyment of playing the course. That’s the easiest way to maintain the relationship with the city and show the future feasibility of disc golf.
LotPT: That’s a great point! (editor’s note: Please do call 311 or write your councillor in not just about this event, but disc golf in general!) Was there any critical feedback about the course?
TJ: There were some pros that would’ve done things a little differently. They can see lines that we don’t really think are there. But I think for the most part, people found it challenging. The fear of the water plays a part that we don’t really experience here in Calgary.
AP: The lack of practice ahead of time.
TJ: Yeah, and the holes along the back along the upper area (holes 14 & 15) presented some good rollaways for people, but it was a different style of hole. I think a couple people were like: “Those were hard, and there wasn’t even any water there.”
LotPT: Did you have any ideas that didn’t work out?
AP: We looked at an island hole going down by the playground on a big downhill shot, but it wasn’t super feasible.
TJ: Yeah, we didn’t want to let the city know that we’re throwing into a playground—it’s not a good look. (laughs)
AP: We would’ve love to use the treed pathways a little bit more, but it was just a little too tight. There were a few holes where the walk between hole A and B was too long, so we found a filler hole in there that we would’ve liked to find a different solution for. A couple of short ones came down to the flow of the course.
LotPT: So, with all of the challenges in putting together a temporary course... would you do it again?
TJ: Yeah... if Alex would do it. Alex made that happen. (laughs)
AP: Yeah, 100%. It was a great experience. It was a lot of work leading up to it, but it was super rewarding to see the overwhelmingly positive feedback from the players. To see players playing a course that you laid out is an experience unlike any other and I’m grateful to have been brought on board to help with it. And a big shout-out to our volunteers!
TJ: And everyone else who helped put this together as well — If I try to name everyone I’ll forget someone — but they were all amazing!
