Disc Golf Courses Per Capita: US Counties

In our article “Most Disc Golf Courses Per Capita: US States," we took a look at which states offered the most disc golf relative to their populations. Here, we've drilled down even further in the data to look at which counties in the U.S. are little bits of disc golf paradise. You can take a look at some of our most interesting findings below.

Smaller is Better (for Per Capita)

Here’s a map of U.S. counties (or county equivalents—Louisiana has parishes and Alaska has boroughs). The darker the blue, the more disc golf courses per capita:

The U.S. has about 3,200 counties. But just under 2,200 of them have disc golf courses. Blank spots on the map are those counties with zero disc golf courses. Some are remote from population centers, and many have no incorporated towns, like—to pick a place easy to spot on the map—Mineral and Esmerelda counties in western Nevada, right along the diagonal border with California.

Although the darker blue regions are scattered a bit more broadly than we saw in the state map, there is still a large concentration of them in the midwest, especially through areas with smaller populations.

Unsurprisingly, the top ten counties with the most courses per capita have very low populations, meaning they need relatively few disc golf courses to make their per capita stats soar:

To be clear, we're not touting each of these areas as disc golf havens. For instance, Hooker County, Nebraska, and its almost 700 residents have just the course at Mullen High School, which has seven holes, posts in the grass marking the tees, and homemade baskets. While all efforts to offer disc golf in an area have our full support, Harris County is likely not a destination disc golfers would want to flock to.

However, the list is also not without its true gems.

Number one Alpine County is the least-populated county in all of California, but it does offer some great disc golf in settings like this:

None of the county's three courses are rated lower than 3.5 of 5 by UDisc users, and two of them, Kirkwood Mountain Resort and Turtle Rock, are rated over 4.5. 

But there is an explanation for why these courses can exist.

“This is a resort area near Lake Tahoe," said Craig Getty, a tournament director and course designer in the Lake Tahoe area. "We’re really blessed with support from the county. The more people visit for disc golf, the better for them. The temperatures are really nice to play in, and we get a lot of golfers up from the valleys in California.”

Getty said there’s never a wait to get on one of the courses in Alpine County, but lodgings may not be easy to come by unless you golf in Getty’s favorite time: the “shoulder seasons” of spring and fall between the busy summer and winter tourist seasons in the Sierras.

Top 10 Counties By Course Totals Only

The ranking of counties by top 10 in disc golf courses per capita clearly favors areas with small populations. That's why we thought it would also be interesting to look at which counties have the most courses simply by raw numbers. 

The places that top the list in that metric are generally large counties with metropolitan areas in them, like Los Angeles County, California, and Maricopa County, Arizona (home to Phoenix). One place that really breaks that mold is St. Louis County in Minnesota—the county, by the way, where pro and course designer Cale Leiviska is originally from. It has no city with a population over 100,000 yet still comes in at sixth place out of all U.S. counties by raw course numbers. 

But enough gab. Here's the rest of the list:

More Nuanced Per Capita Rankings 

This section is likely the one that gives the fairest look at what counties are leading the per capita races. Here we've listed top tens within different population bands so that it's not just places with low populations and a few courses that get a chance to be in the spotlight.

Below you'll see the top 10 list of disc golf courses per capita by county within these population bands: 20k-50k, 50k-100k, 100k-250k, 250k-500k, 500k-1 million, and over 1 million.

20k-50k

50k-100k

100k-250k

250k-500k

500k-1 million

1 million+

There are quite a few places on this list that will have those knowledgable about disc golf hotspots nodding their heads. For us, places like Androscoggin County, Maine; Hennepin County, Minnesota; and Tarrant, Dallas, and Collin Counties in Texas all made complete sense since they're home to places that made our list of Top Disc Golf Cities—USA. 

Still, by far the biggest takeaway is that there is very little overall pattern. Mapping the 70 counties in the tables above creates a random picture, showing only some overrepresentation in the midwest, which we’ve seen in our previous maps, and what looks to be Texas’ status as champion of large, metropolitan-area disc golf course access.

More to Come

While we might have dug about as deep into the courses-per-capita data as we plan to for now, we're always interested in examining what numbers can show us about how and where disc golf is growing. If you enjoy articles like these, don't doubt we'll have more like it coming out in the future. Keep an eye on our blog page for them or make sure not to miss any of our articles by signing up for the Release Point newsletter here.