best illinois disc golf

There’s a reason Rockford is a destination spot for people that have fallen in love with disc golf, or “frolfing.”

This graph from discgolf.com shows how much it has grown over just the past 5 years.

That’s an almost 15x increase in rounds played between 2016 and 2021. Undoubtedly, the pandemic played a huge part in disc golf’s exploding popularity since it was one of the few activities you could still do in public during a lockdown.

I’ll fully admit that I’ve never been disc golfing but that is going to change this summer. I wasn’t aware of the facilities we have here in town and for some reason TikTok has been showing me a lot of disc golf videos over the last year. Maybe TikTok knows something about me that I don’t yet.

For this list of Rockford disc golf courses, I’m going to focus on the ones run by the Park District but there are at least 10 courses in the area from Rockford to Beloit. You can find a complete list of every disc golf course here. 

The Rockford Park District has 5 courses in 3 locations for players of all levels.

Anna Page Park:

According to the Park District website, Anna Page Park is considered “one of the finest disc golf facilities in the country.” It is comprised of 3 separate courses.

• East Course (built in 1986) – Beautiful scenic course with concrete tee pads; a nice mix of open fairways and woods with pins in tight areas. All holes have both easy and advanced positions for different level of players.
• West Course (built in 2004) – Presents its own challenges with some tight wooded fairways and elevation changes plus some long open holes for the big arms.
• South Course (built in 2013) – Long in places but tight and technical with tunnels through the woods making this one of the premier courses in northern Illinois and a destination for visitors from around the country.

Ingersoll Park

Built in 2018 this course works its way through a mature oak savannah and is compact

and level. A perfect course for beginners and kids.

Shorewood Park

The newest course in the area, the Shorewood Park course was built in 2021. This 9-hole course along the Rock River is another great course for kids or beginners.

I would also like to note that while researching this article I came across a