The City is home to one of the area’s premiere 18-hole disc golf courses at Roger A. Reynolds Municipal Park and more improvements are coming to the layout in the coming months.
“We’re getting ready to do a second phase on the course, which will make the tee pads longer and lay out a second hole placement for the baskets,” said Ed Merritt, Director of Hilliard Recreation and Parks. “So we’re excited for the opportunity for all levels of play out here.”
The permanent course was renovated in 2020 with a combination of open, wooden, scrubby, and water holes to appeal to all levels of play. Merritt was instrumental in the process when he took over his new role in 2019.
“Disc golf is that sport that anybody can play,” Merritt said. “The popularity over the last 15-20 years has grown by leaps and bounds.”
Merritt and his team worked alongside Dean Barbo and the Columbus Flyers Disc Golf Club to design the new layout.
“The City of Hilliard has been very receptive the whole thing all along,” Barbo said. “When we designed the course, I really wanted to keep beginners and less advanced players interested. Then we have the long tees, which I designed to challenge the better players.”
Currently, the long tees (artificial turf) play at 6,203 feet, while the short tees (concrete pads) encourage plenty of aces with a distance of 4,431 feet.
“We’re going to get more cement tee pads and then have “B-placements” which is another collar that the basket sits in,” Barbo said. “This way we can move the collar from place to place to change the angles of the hole, which keeps people interested and also give grass and plants some relief from all the foot traffic.”
