It will come as no surprise to many of our readers that traditional golf courses can also be home to amazing disc golf courses. And while not all golf course operators are sold on the idea of hosting a disc golf course during peak season, some are willing to welcome disc golfers when temperatures dip and their regular clientele trade golf balls for snow balls.
Unlike golf, disc golf can be enjoyed when courses are snow-covered, and when there's no powder, discs don't create the same craters in frozen earth that golf balls do. Additionally, it's usually easy – and more fun for disc golfers, who like a few obstacles – to play on the fringes of golf courses' carefully maintained fairways and stay away from the all-important golf greens entirely.
To find out how these arrangements can work, we talked with people involved with winter-only disc golf courses at golf facilities around Toronto and in Minnesota. It turns out that, like when ski hills welcome disc golf in the summer, golf courses are enjoying benefits from having a draw in all seasons, such as additional revenue from disc golf round fees and enough traffic to employ previously seasonal staff year-round.
Making Golf Courses a Year-Round Attraction with Winter Disc Golf
Green Haven is an 18-hole golf course in Anoka, Minnesota. As a public course owned by the city, they do their best to offer recreational opportunities throughout the year. This led them to the idea of offering disc golf during the winter, and that idea led them to Dan Schnabel, who has a reputation for running excellent disc golf events in the region. Their collaboration led to the winter-only disc golf course The Cedars at Green Haven, which is now in its fourth year of operation. Schnabel helps install and remove the course each year.
"The real goal is just to get people outside," said Schnabel. "The courses are open seven days a week. We run both evening glow leagues and morning weekend leagues to provide availability for people with different schedules and preferences."
Along with disc golf, Green Haven also offers cross country skiing throughout the course in the winter. Not only do the two sports coexist peacefully, disc golf has given the facilities team an additional use for its expensive trail grooming equipment.
"If there's more than six inches of snow on the ground, the cross country grooming machine grooms the disc golf fairways along with the cross-country ski trails that are on the golf course," said Schnabel.
This makes it less likely for players to lose their discs in deep snow, and the compacted snow provides for a more level throwing surface, and a sturdier protective barrier for the golf course underneath.
Two other golf courses that have used disc golf as a way to provide a recreational outlet during the offseason are Scarlett Woods and Dentonia Park, municipally-operated public courses in Toronto, Canada, which first decided to offer disc golf in late 2020 to help people get outside and have some fun safely during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.
"Toronto is incredibly dense with limited space for parks," said Cara Hovius of ChainLink Disc Golf, the organization responsible for a majority of the disc golf courses in the Toronto Metropolitan Area, including the seasonal courses at Scarlett Woods and Dentonia Park. "In the winter, these two courses within the heart of the city become outlets for people to play outside."
Play counts on UDisc show that disc golfers are very excited to enjoy these courses reserved specifically for their game in the winter season. For example, over the period of December 23, 2025 to January 19, 2026, there were fewer rounds recorded at popular year-round Toronto courses Toronto Island, Marilyn Bell, and Beaches Disc Golf at Ashbridges Bay combined than at either Scarlett Woods or Dentonia individually.
Another benefit of these seasonal attractions is how simple they can be to erect and disassemble. An experienced designer can create a fun disc golf course at almost any golf course by simply placing mobile baskets and tees (often artificial turf mats) strategically around the course – no landscaping required. Once the design is finished, course set-up and breakdown can be done rapidly.
"It typically takes the City of Toronto and its union staff about one day to install the baskets, tees, and signs," MacKeigan told us. "They use standard golf course equipment, mainly utility carts, to transport baskets and materials."
The impermanence of these disc golf setups also make them a low-stakes way to test whether a permanent disc golf course would be a popular local offering.
"The city of Anoka wants to install a permanent disc golf course in the future," said Schnabel. "The course at Green Haven was a really easy way for them to show the rest of the community how valuable disc golf can be and how many people are gonna come out."
And they do come out. The Cedars at Green Haven has over 500 ratings and has averaged around 450 rounds recorded in the UDisc app per month it has been open. What's more, those round counts are only a fraction of how much disc golf is really being played because, as Schnabel noted, usage of UDisc for scoring is much lower during the winter as most people won't take their hands out of their gloves to keep score during the cold winter rounds.
Winter Disc Golf Can Help Golf Courses Retain Jobs & Reliable Staff
Along with simply getting people outside and testing the disc golf waters (or ice floes), winter disc golf traffic can help golf courses keep staff employed.
That's the case at Brookview Golf Course located just a few minutes from downtown Minneapolis in Golden Valley, Minnesota. The course has a recently renovated clubhouse that offers a bar and grill along with a banquet facility and numerous meeting rooms. During the winter, Brookview's 27 holes of ball golf transform into 36 holes of disc golf across Brookview Blue and Brookview Red.
"The catalyst for disc golf was that the city of Golden Valley owns the property and leases it to the golf course," said Charlie Hutchinson, who designs the winter disc golf courses at Brookview and also runs the store Gotta Go Gotta Throw. "The operator of the golf course was looking for winter activities to avoid laying off his bar staff for the offseason. So the idea was to get disc golfers on the property for free to get patrons in the bar and restaurant."
Adding cold disc golfers coming in off the course to warm up and refuel to the bar and restaurant's regular patrons during the winter have helped enable Brookview to keep its bar and restaurant open year-round. The staff are appreciative of the extra business and tips the disc golfers bring as well as their gratitude and positive attitudes.
"I've gotten to know the staff there because of our Ice Bowl event, which is a pretty big event – we typically get three to four hundred people who show up," said Hutchinson. "The staff are always complimenting us after, mentioning how kind of a group we are and how nice we are to serve."
The Ice Bowl not only brings hundreds of players to the course and thousands of dollars of revenue to the restaurant, proceeds from each registration support Second Harvest Heartland's goal of reducing food insecurity in Minnesota.
Barstaff aren't the only employees who have seen their hours maintained during the offseason thanks to disc golf, either. In Toronto, the game has helped parks and facilities managers keep their jobs during the winter months.
"One of the biggest supporters of winter disc golf is the union that manages the parks," said MacKeigan. "Their workers don't get laid off in the fall. They can stay on and work all year. Disc golfers are so grateful to have somewhere to play – they're not complaining or making angry calls about course conditions. It also makes their job easier in the spring because they've been out there all year taking care of the course."
Does Winter Disc Golf Damage Golf Courses?
If disc golf was harming the painstakingly maintained grounds of these Minnesota and Toronto courses, it wouldn't be welcomed back year after year. With strategic design and collaboration with course management, disc golf can be added in a way that avoids sensitive areas of golf courses such as greens, teeing areas, and sand traps.
"We had minor damage to a fairway or two the first season, so we made sure that no one would walk closer than 100 feet [31 meters] to the greens," said Schnabel. "We rope them off and make them all out of bounds. We keep our tees and baskets, where the heaviest foot traffic is, in the rough. As people throw their drives, there's a natural spray off the tee pad, kind of like a baseball diamond, which spreads out our foot traffic across the fairways and keeps them from getting damaged."
In Toronto, they've found that winter disc golf actually helps protect course conditions.
"There have been some incredible unintended consequences," said MacKeigan. "Disc golf has been able to stop golfers from destroying their own courses. In the winter, some golfers go out and play traditional golf when no one else is there and there's no security. It destroys the courses. Groups of disc golfers enjoying the property keeps these illicit golfers away until the spring."
Another important way to protect golf courses that host winter disc golf is for course organizers to keep a close eye on the weather. Golf courses should open to disc golf after the grass has gone dormant and the ground is frozen and close them before the spring thaw and mud season. It's also a good idea to temporarily close courses to disc golfers should there be an unseasonable warm spell that causes muddy conditions.
Can Winter Disc Golf Work at Your Local Golf Course?
In places with large climatic differences between summer and winter, like Minnesota and Toronto, disc golf is proving to be an affordable and attractive way to entice visitors to golf courses in the winter while ensuring an easy conversion back to ball golf in the spring.
If you're thinking about talking to your local golf course about trying out disc golf in the winter, here are some things to have in mind:
- This model will only work at golf courses that close or see drastic reductions in traffic during the winter months. There are plenty of golf courses that have year-round disc golf, but the designs of those courses tend to be different than winter-only set-ups.
- These courses should be fun to a wide range of disc golfers, not just the upper crust of players – keep that in mind when you propose and design a course.
- Think about how you'll source baskets, tees, and tee signs and have a cost estimate for them before approaching golf course administrators.
- Be flexible and ready to compromise in terms of disc golf course design and when the course can be open to disc golfers. The health of the golf course should always be the main priority in these arrangements.
You can also go into any meeting with plenty of stats backing up disc golf's popularity in your area or those similar to it. Learn more in "Free Disc Golf Stats From UDisc For Your Pitch, Proposal, Or Presentation."
