That's a lot of golfers!

I wonder if MA could handle this many golfers for a weekend tourney? What caught my eye was the last quote: "Here in Bowling Green, we can be at eight to 10 courses in 25 minutes.” Wow, that must be pretty nice!

Bigger and better

By OJ STAPLETON, The Daily News, ojstapleton@bgdailynews.com (full article)

With more than 730 players in this year's Bowling Green Amateur Disc Golf Championships, there's plenty of things that could go wrong.

But thanks to plenty of advance planning, the first two rounds of the tournament went off without a hitch Saturday.

“Everything went off exactly on time - despite having all those players,” tournament director Larry Bledsoe said. “With all the feedback I've been getting, pretty much everybody is ready to come back for next year.”

The tournament has experienced huge growth in recent years; this year's 734 participants is nearly 200 more than last year.

In 2001, the tournament had just 246 disc golfers and it has grown steadily ever since, becoming the biggest two-day event sponsored by the PDGA.

Tim Knaul, a local disc golfer, has played in the tournament since 2003 and has seen the growth firsthand.

“Even the first year I played it - it was still pretty big and there was a lot of players in my division,” Knaul said. “Even back then, when I was playing against 150 people, it was still the biggest tournament around. It's always been awesome in my mind.”

In the past five years, the field has more than doubled, thanks in large part to simple word of mouth.

“It was almost like a domino effect,” Knaul said. “People play this tournament and then go back home and tell their friends, ‘Hey, I played in this really great tournament.' The last few years, I think it's mainly grown because of word of mouth.”

But the number of attendees isn't the only difference the tournament has seen.

Local disc golfer, Josh Dobelstein, has played in the tournament in 2001 and said the intensity of the competition has grown.

The fact that the Bowling Green area has so many quality disc golf courses has helped the amateur championships morph into such a big event. Last year was the first time the tournament expanded to make use of eight different courses.

“You can go to a lot of bigger cities and they're going to have the same number of courses that we have,” Knaul said. “But you have to drive across town to get to them. Here in Bowling Green, we can be at eight to 10 courses in 25 minutes.”