Best Place To Throw Down

Kansas City may not have mountains or oceans, but it has trees and hills and more than its share of people passionately devoted to disc golf. Disc golf is like golf, except it's played with Frisbee-like things instead of balls, and baskets on poles instead of holes. Local practitioners of the sport have succeeded in getting six courses cut into area parks -- which enticed the Professional Disc Golf Association Amateur World Championships to the city in July. "Kansas City itself is spoiled for disc golf," says Jack Lowe, president of the Kansas City Flying Disc Club. "There's nowhere else in America where you can play such diverse courses." The best of these is the undulating course at Waterworks Park north of the river. Kept up by the Kansas City Parks Department and volunteers from the Flying Disc Club, the eighteen-hole course has the look of a country club. It features concrete pads, benches, colorful hole diagrams and posts to hold disc bags at each tee box. The signature fourteenth hole falls away gracefully to reveal a view of the Missouri River, the downtown airport and Kansas City's skyline.