VAN ZEE DISC GOLF COURSE

My sixth disc golf disc—an Innova DX Leopard fairway driver disc. Opaque orange, 170 grams. Thank you to the wife for this one. It was a birthday gift.

---

Troy's Work Table needed to try out a good disc golf course other than his home course of White River. So a road trip to Port Orchard and Bremerton was in order.

---



Van Zee Disc Golf Course is a ten-hole course that runs throughout Port Orchard's Van Zee Park. This was a fun short course that plays through different types of terrain. Some holes are on open fields; some are through the woods, with trees and ferns as obstacles; some are alongside chainlink fencing; some play uphill, some downhill, some level. The amount of variety in such a small park is rather amazing.

The entire course is well-maintained and excellently signed. It also has one of the best maps I have seen for a disc golf course—that means that it is easily readable and represents the actual terrain. (It is more than just a bunch of nonsensical scribbles that have been converted to a PDF file or a photograph with lines placed over a canopy of trees.) Much of this is due to the work of Port Orchard's Public Works department and the members of the West Sound Disc Golf Association. Both organizations have made this course a pleasant experience in the midst of a residential neighborhood.

---

The holes are somewhat shorter than many other courses, but they still have obstacles and difficulties to work around. You better make sure you can "stick" your disc on an uphill or downhill throw or it will roll to places you wish it didn't. You better make sure you can sneak it through a couple of thick fir branches or your disc isn't going anywhere.

---

Each hole at Van Zee DGC is par 3. The total course par is 30. I played 39 for the entire course. I am pretty happy with that for my first visit.

Hole 1 - 4
Hole 2 - 4
Hole 3 - 5
Hole 4 - 3
Hole 5 - 4
Hole 6 - 5
Hole 7 - 3
Hole 8 - 3
Hole 9 - 4
Hole 10 - 4
Total - 39

I thought that hole 9 would be much easier than it was, except that I hit the trees right in front of the tee on my opening shot and my second shot kept rolling down the hill and well past the basket. But that is my problem!

---

This was a good course to play my Leopard disc because it handled nicely on the fairways of these shorter holes, landing fairly close to where I intended on each throw.

---

Other amenities at Van Zee include restrooms, picnic shelters, barbecue grill, and a playground for the kids. The only drawback may be on days that baseball games are played, since holes 1 and 10 border the two baseball fields. On the morning that the child and I played, we were the only ones in the park for most of the time.