A Bittersweet Goodbye
Hello my disc golfing friends,
This past weekend was a monumental, yet bittersweet weekend for myself and BDGC. In order to truly explain the significance of the weekend, and past month to be honest, I have to go back in time and remind, or possibly even educate you, on a few important timelines in my life. This may end up being quite a read, and I apologize for that if you prefer my shorter blogs, but to anyone who makes it to the end, you will be the few who truly know what this past weekend meant for me. The picture below will give you a quick hint.
Somewhere around 2008 or 2009 was where my disc golf journey began. After originally dismissing the idea of trying the sport of disc golf, my mind was quickly changed. Like most who play this wonderful sport, when I finally decided to go out and try a round of disc golf, it was love at first flight. While I started as a very casual player, it didn't take long for me to begin promoting the sport within my area in hopes to, as we all say, "grow the sport". Less than 5 years after starting the sport, I had already created a couple youtube channels to showcase my local courses. One of those inventively becoming BDGC. If you want to learn more about my early days of disc golf and how I got into the sport, the "About" section here on the website tells the full story.
Also mentioned in the "About" section on the website, in addition to filming and editing disc golf videos, I also began doing my best to find other avenues of raising awareness of disc golf in my area, including outreach events in partnership with the local library, non-sanctioned fundraiser charity tournaments, and local putting leages and doubles events. Very few people, if any know this, but over the years I have hosted (or helped with hosting) over 115 different disc golf events. I know this number is comparatively low to hundreds of disc golfers around the world, but I feel like it is not a number to scoff at. Many of these events being hosted several years ago, it had been quite some time since I had ran an event myself, but that changed this past weekend.
Now let's jump to the year 2018. In October of 2018, I started a full-time sales position at a disc golf store located in Whitesburg, TN called Halo Disc Golf & Sports. During my time at Halo, I was granted the opportunity by owner Rick Gray, to help design a disc golf course on the shop's property with friend, local pro, and at the time, co-worker Seth Overbay. While the property already had a couple baskets installed a more temporary course layout, Seth and I were given the opportunity to re-design the course creating a more permanent and event friendly layout. After hours, days, weeks, and months of design work and course labor, Seth and I opened Halo DGC on a semi-private scale in 2020.
Halo DGC was designed as a short practice style course with the longest hole being only 360' in length. However with multiple ponds in play, mandatory gaps, and OB property lines lining the outer holes, this course had some teeth. So many teeth in fact, that lots of locals actually refused to play the course because of the possibility of losing a disc to the ponds. While the opportunity was there to shoot an absolutely lights out round birding almost every hole, your round could also go south quickly with all of the penalty possibilities in play. This made for some of the wildest score separation I have ever seen on a 9 hole course.
In 2023, with the permission of Rick Gray, course improvements continued as I began designing alternate tee locations for each of the 9 baskets on Halo DGC. With the help of friend and then co-worker Blake Lawson, 18 rubber mats were installed for tee pads on Halo DGC. 9 of these covered the existing natural grass tee areas with recessed brick markers, but the other 9 were brand new tee locations creating the possibility to play 18 holes of disc golf at Halo DGC. For hours, days, and weeks, Blake and I worked tirelessly on the final design touches, rubber mat installation, painting tees for layout identifiers, and regular course maintenance.
As you can see from the video above, Halo DGC B Tees was born. Most of the newer tee locations were longer than the original tees, (now called A Tees) but some of them had to be shorter to keep player safety and course flow in mind. Since the new tees were a mix of shorter and longer holes, Halo DGC went from having one 9 hole layout to having four different 9 hole layouts (A, B, Short, and Long) and an "All 18 Tees" layout. Halo DGC went from being a quick round and a short practice course, to a more challenging and full disc golf experience. I wont post videos to each layout here, but if you want to see a playlist of every video I ever filmed at this course, click here. I would also like to mention that there is no way I would have ever gotten all of the newer course improvements done on my own, so huge thank you to Blake for helping my idea of a full course become a reality!
Somewhere in-between the installation of the two Halo DGC layouts, on that very field, I started a video series on BDGC called Throwing EVERY Disc Possible. In this series, I decided that rather than doing official disc golf reviews, I would simply try and get my hands on as many different disc golf molds I possibly could to give a toss. Since I worked at that time at Halo Disc Golf and Sports, I had access to a huge, and constantly alternating, inventory of used discs. I uploaded the first episode of Throwing EVERY Disc Possible on May 23, 2023. Since then, every single episode of the series has been filmed on the property just behind the Halo shop. I have uploaded one new episode every single day since then. I did shift my positioning at one point to get a better angle of the filed and a more flat throwing surface, but all 1,329 of the current filmed episodes of Throwing EVERY Disc Possible have been filmed in that same field. (I have episodes scheduled all the way up to January of 2027) This is where things begin to change.
Now, let's jump ahead to 2025. After nearly 9 years of operation in Whitesburg, TN, Halo Disc Golf & Sports came to an end. The inventory at Halo was bought out by Kenny Kitchings and family at Throwmore Disc Golf Store. Another long-time disc golf store located in Kingsport TN, the Throwmore family already knew what they were doing when it comes to running a disc golf store. While Rick was simply ready to move on to the next chapter in his life, the Throwmore family was eager to open up a second location with the former Halo inventory. Staying on site and leasing the building where Halo was located, Throwmore Morristown was then born. But with one small catch. It was in Whitesburg. If you want to learn more about the transition from Halo to Throwmore Morristown, check out this video that I filmed with Max Kitchings (and John Bernard) of the Throwmore family. From late October 2025 to mid August 2026, Throwmore Morristown would remain at the Halo Disc Golf and Sports former location and I would later rename the course online to Halo DGC at Throwmore Morristown. In mid August 2026, just a few short weeks ago, everything would change.
Now, we are caught up to present times. It is now September 2026 and last month was an absolute rollercoaster of a month. While we had obviously had hopes to move into the city with the name Throwmore Morristown, the thought of it was seemingly remaining an idea rather than a reality. With the ever-growing expansion of Morristown, property availability and lease prices were among the list of issues that were keeping us in Whitesburg. That changed suddenly when what seems to be the perfect spot in town became available. We discovered the spot on Tuesday August 11th and we were fully moved in and had opened back up in Morristown that following Monday. What a weekend it was.
To get to the entire point of this blog post and address the title "A Bittersweet Goodby", this means that Halo DGC and access to the filming grounds of my Throwing EVERY Disc Possible series are no more. While this may not seem like a big deal to some, this move was huge for me. I am now on the search for a new location to continue filming my Throwing EVERY Disc Possible Series (I have a few places in mind but nothing set in stone) and I had to say goodbye to Halo DGC. A course that I spent countless hours on whether it be the initial course design, upkeep and maintenance, filming promotional videos to promote the course, designing tee signs, uploading and mapping out the course on various websites, and so many other small things to help make the course what it was.
As mentioned in the "A Bittersweet Goodbye video, at the permission of Rick Gray, I was able to host one last doubles event at the course utilizing the "All 18 Tees" layout this past Saturday. Mainly wanting the chance to play the course one last time myself, I had expected that only a handful of people would show up for the event I posted. I was blown away when cars just kept pulling in and players kept signing up. Overall, I had a showing of 29 players which as you can guess, pretty much fills up a 9 hole course. We had 2 aces during the round, (let's go Scotty and John!) and everyone seemed to have a great time during this course's final send off. I want to thank each and every one of you who ever played Halo DGC an especially those who were able to make it for the One Last Round. Goodbye Halo Disc Golf Course.
Love,
Baysinger
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