Community celebrates upgrade to disc golf course

Published 11:43 am Friday, July 12, 2024

Following the ribbon cutting, Rosalie Reeder and Angela Elder, along with other Think Tifton staff, encouraged patrons to enjoy the new disc golf course while handing out Tifton-themed discs and merchandise and offering doughnuts from Yodee’s Mobile Fresh.

TIFTON — Fulwood Park’s disc golf course has received a major overhaul to improve the game and park experience for its patrons.

The Tifton-Tift County Tourism Association unveiled the park’s newly upgraded disc golf course Thursday, July 11, made possible through a collaboration between the Tift County Recreation Department, the tourism association, and their greater governing bodies.

The updated course, now dubbed the Fulwood Park Nature Trail Disc Golf Course, has been reoriented in terms of layout to steer games away from more trafficked areas of the park, and now boasts new baskets and clearer signage to better outline the layout of the holes to players.

Additionally, the course is the first trail in Georgia to be made part of the Kids in Parks TRACK Trail program, a campaign dedicated to encouraging children across the nation to enjoy the great outdoors.

Frank Sayles Jr., chair for the Tifton-Tift County Tourism Association, stated that the renovations were carried out as a means of attracting more people to Fulwood Park and the surrounding community, namely those interested in the disc-throwing game.

The disc golf course was already popular among players prior to the upgrades, Sayles reported, and he hoped that these improvements would draw more players and events themed around the sport to the area.

“Come out here any time of day — afternoons, any day of the week, especially weekends — there are disc golfers everywhere,” Sayles said. “It’s well-played, it’s already had a few tournaments, folks from Valdosta, from other communities, have come up here. We’ve also seen travelers come through Tifton who’ve found out we have a disc golf course and have stopped to play.”

The local chamber of commerce held a ribbon cutting to celebrate the grand opening, with the staff of Think Tifton partnering with food truck Yodee’s Mobile Fresh to provide guests with donuts and discs for the occasion.

Prior to the official ceremony, Mayor Julie Smith expressed her admiration for the show of collaboration between the city and county departments in putting the revamped course together, seeing its completion after two years of redevelopment as a testament to the potential of the two organizations coming together.