It’s been nearly a year in the making but a new disc golf course in Alma is ready to officially open next month.

Work on the $30,000, 18-hole course, located  just off Bridge Street behind the city’s transit center at 1105 Willow Run Drive, is wrapping up.

Although the city owns the property the facility is being run and maintained by the Alma Disc Golf Club.

“We opened in late spring but there was still a lot of work to be done,” Club President Craig Compton said. “But it’s nearly ready. We are trimming trees and mowing and installing tee signs on each hole.”

The concrete tee pads are in place. All but five holes will have two pads and each hole will have two baskets making it play at different lengths to accommodate both experienced and novice players.

The club, which started with four founding members, now has about 25 participants and continues to grow, along with the popularity of the sport, Compton said.

The pandemic played a part in that with people looking for inexpensive outdoor activities to take part in, he added.

And one of the pluses of disc golf is that you don’t have to spend a lot of cash to get started.
It’s free to play the course and all you need are a couple of discs, which cost an average of $10 each, to begin.

The sport is played much like traditional golf, but instead of using clubs to hit a ball into a hole, discs are thrown into raised metal baskets with chains mounted on poles.

Scoring is also similar with players counting the number of throws it takes them to get their discs into the basket.

The Alma course has holes ranging from a little more than 200 feet to a couple that measure more than 1,000 feet.

Unlike courses that are usually found in state or county parks, the Alma Disc Golf Club is “100 percent…