The sound of clanging chains echoes through Johnny Roberts Disc Golf Course at Memorial Park as small orange discs crash into metal baskets. This course — the busiest in the nation — is in constant motion. The disc-hurling duffers log tens of thousands of rounds in the wooded links on the banks of Ralston Creek every year, sending their plastic soaring. 

“People build communities just because they see other people out on the course regularly,” says Monica Thomas, the chief operating officer at UDisc, an app created in 2017 that helps users find nearby courses.

Disc golf is growing in popularity nationally, with more than 17,000 courses worldwide, and Colorado ranks first in the nation for disc golf availability, according to the UDisc 2026 Disc Golf Growth Report. 

A disc golf course can contain up to 18 strategically placed baskets, and traditional golf courses, vary in difficulty and length. The goal of the game is to spin a variety of discs — each specifically weighted as drivers and putters — through sometimes technical terrain and land them in chain-draped baskets. The fewest throws win, just like regular golf. 

Disc golf has a much smaller footprint than traditional golf. That’s part of the appeal. Since the sport’s founding in California in 1975, towns and clubs have built more than 11,000 disc golf courses in the U.S., compared with around 16,500 golf courses. The Nordic countries are all in, with Norway building 100 disc golf courses a year in the last five years and Iceland having more disc courses per capita — one for every 4,500 residents — than any other country. 

Read more from Jayden Fortner at ColoradoSun.com.