(upbeat music) -[Narrator] Disc golf is a sport that has been growing rapidly since its inception in the 1970s.

Today, there are nearly 200 disc golf courses here in Nebraska.

-[James] The majority of communities around the state have a small disc golf course these days.

It can be played by people of all ages, too.

It's a real lifetime sport and doesn't require an incredible amount of physical exertion, so it's kind of just a nice walk in the park.

A lot of times.

-[Narrator] From casual courses and local parks, to elite level tournament courses where professional disc golfers make a career out of playing the game.

-[Announcer] No.

(crowd cheering) - So disc golf is played very similar to ball golf in the sense that you have a tee and a hole, and the object of the game is going from tee, finishing into the hole in the lowest amount of strokes possible.

(gravel crunching) -[James] Yes.

-[Terry] Nice one.

-[James] There you go.

-[Terry] I definitely think that disc golf is still growing.

There's the hobby recreational disc golfer, which makes up a large chunk.

And then there's the competitive disc golfer.

-[Narrator] Out of those 16,000 courses, ranking number 70 globally, the Beal Slough Disc Golf Course is right here in Lincoln, Nebraska.

(rock music) -[James] To have Beal Slough included in UDisc's Top 100 world ranking is a huge honor.

It's super exciting to have something like that in Lincoln.

So one of the goals with Beal Slough in the first place was to create kind of like a destination course and put Lincoln on the map.

We have folks traveling in on the weekend specifically to play this course from Iowa, Kansas City, Colorado.

(chain rattling) (rock music) Before we put in the disc golf course at.

It was pretty untouched piece of land.

(dial tone) (upbeat music) -[Trenton] So the club for a long time wanted to build another 18 hole course.

So in 2019, we approached the city again.

And then they came to us like, well there's this other piece of property that we, you know, accumulated over the last ten years.

Why don't you guys take a look at, Beal Slough Greenway?

It's a greenway, not a park, which is a big difference.

And so that means the city doesn't maintain this area, but it also means it was a blank slate for us to design on.

(upbeat music) -[James] I think it was November of 2020, came out here for the first time and started walking through every last corner of the space, making notes of kind of unique features of the property little slopes, cool trees, stuff like that that I wanted to incorporate into the design.

(upbeat music) So after identifying some of those unique features, we'd start to sketch out some ideas on the map of "a hole might look cool here," sort of thing.

"A hole might look cool here," but that's where it really comes into fitting those pieces of the puzzle together.

(upbeat music) -[Trenton] So my background is in engineering.

He's more of the designer, branding, you know, knows that side of things where I'm like, are I how are we going to make this actual hole work?

How are these structures going to work?

We immediately, you know, hit all of the things that we wanted, you know, to really, you know, making a championship level disc golf course.

(upbeat music) -[Narrator] Disc golf will soon be $1 billion industry.

Professional disc golfers earn a living by touring the United States and the world.

Through sponsorships with disc manufacturers and tournament winnings.

There is more than enough excitement to go around and much more to come.

(crowd cheering) (wind rustling) (keys jingling) (lock clicking) (wind rustling) -[Terry] I was introduced to disc golf by a friend, and it just kind of snowballed and started realizing that there's a huge community here.

My whole idea was to supply disc golf goods to Lincoln disc golfers, and then the greater Nebraska disc golfers came and started shopping here.

And that was awesome.

And I was like, wow, that's really cool to be able to supply disc to people from Grand Island, from Kearney, from McCook, all over the place, because there's great disc golf courses all over the state of Nebraska.

It's all based on the disc golf community.

Like any other hobby activity or hobby sport, you're in with it, with people who are like minded.

They're in it for the same thing, having fun with a little bit of challenge along the way.

And that challenge, unfortunately, comes with losing discs.

Again, idea from the community that I just took on.

So they do have lost and found boxes at two courses; Tierra and Beal.

Beal Slough disc golf course, of course it's highly trafficked.

Being ranked number 70th in the world.

So it brings a lot of people from out of town to Lincoln to play the course, and they visit the shop.

And so they even have an opportunity to get their discs back because of that.

- Yeah.

- We'll see you next time.

- Take care.

- Yeah.

(beeping sound) -[Terry] We're growing here in Nebraska.

So what's happening now is high schools are starting to recognize disc golf as a sport.

Then that translates to the colleges.

So now you have disc golf teams in college.

And those college sponsored disc golf players are now trying to go pro.

And so absolutely the growth of disc golf is in my opinion, just starting.

(upbeat music) -[James] It's a lifetime sport.

I started playing when I could walk, essentially.

And you know, my dad's in his 60s now, still playing, and we both plan on playing for as long as we can.

(upbeat music) (wind rustling)