Nearly 20 years ago, David Wheeler and his family moved to Charlotte for an unusual reason: disc golf.
“We were living in Charleston, and my wife had just finished her degree to become a physician’s assistant. She asked me where I wanted to move after she graduated. I told her Charlotte. She said to me, ‘Are you serious?’ And I said, ‘Charlotte is the disc golf mecca. I want to live in the mecca,’” Wheeler said.
“She said, ‘You’re crazy, but OK, whatever,’ and here we are.”
At the time, moving to another state to play a sport the layman might describe as “just throwing frisbees into baskets,” may have seemed an odd decision. Two decades later, as Wheeler looks out on the disc golf course he created and maintains by his own hand, it’s easy to see how choosing to move to the “disc golf mecca” brought him exactly where he was meant to be.
We recently spent some time with Wheeler to learn more about his love for disc golf and for the Dry Creek Disc Golf Course.
How did you first get into disc golf?
I probably first started playing in 1995. I had some friends in college who played, and sometimes I joined them, but it wasn’t until about 2002 when I really got into it. I was working for the USDA in Texas, at an agriculture research station where we genetically modified plants to make them better. Some of the other guys who worked there played. I needed to make some friends at work, so I would tag along. Then I discovered there were competitive disc golf clubs and tournaments. Once I played in my first tournament, I was hooked.
You relocated to the Charlotte area for disc golf. You didn’t have a job, but things came together pretty quickly. Tell us about that.
I didn’t have a job, but I don’t think it was even a month before South Piedmont posted a job for a biology instructor. I applied thinking there was no way they would hire me, but I got hired a few weeks later. Over the years, I became a department chair for science, then math and science, and then I was asked to come over to School of Health & Public Safety. People here knew I played disc golf, and one day Mike Maffucci, who was the director of student activities at the time, and I were talking. We thought it would be a great idea to build a course on this farmland behind what is now the OCH Main building. We talked to Dr. Sidor, who was the president at the time, but he was a bit hesitant. Then he went to visit Haywood Community College, and he saw all these students playing disc golf on their course. He came back and said, “Go for it.”
You designed and built the course. Tell us about it and the building process.
We started cutting the trees down in November 2013, and we opened in March 2014. We had to borrow a tractor to bushhog the property, and we had GPS maps to help us see where there were trees. We walked the property countless times. We worked with what we had, and let the land determine the course. The course has undergone significant changes since then and become much better. When they built OCH Main, I lost holes 1, 2, 17, and 18, so I had to reconfigure the course. We actually have two separate courses at Dry Creek. One is a midlevel course with a par 57, and the other is a pro-level course with a par 70. The courses are laid over each other. Some of the holes are shared; some are separate. From tee to green, the course is 9,269 feet long. I’m told it’s the longest course in North Carolina.
You maintain the course to this day, on your own time and using your own equipment. What does the course mean to you?
Yes, I still have to mow and edge the course and trim the trees. People forget that trees and grass still grow. I probably put in a couple hundred hours per year maintaining the course. I do all the tree trimming. I’ve learned how to use a chain saw. There was a time when I was playing five to seven rounds of disc golf per week. Today, I’m lucky if I play one round a week. But I drive by the course on my way home every day, and there are always cars parked in the disc golf parking lot. To have built something that allows people to be outside, make friends, and enjoy the sport is a great feeling. When I built the course, I didn’t build it with the illusion that it would be permanent. The College will continue to grow, and we will always need more space and buildings, but I do hope there is some form of a disc golf course after I’m gone. It’s also important to say that the course wouldn’t be what it is without the help of several volunteers and some of my closest friends who are also disc golfers and who don’t hesitate to help when I call them.
How did you come up with the name Dry Creek?
A lot of disc golf courses are named after creeks. When we were trying to figure out a name, I knew I wanted some sort of creek name. The pond behind OCH Main has taken it over, but at the time, there was a spring coming out of the ground, and sometimes there was a creek running through the land — but only sometimes. My brother used to live in a town in New Mexico called Arroyo Seco, which means “dry creek” in Spanish. So, we called it Dry Creek.
What would you say to someone who’s never played disc golf?
It’s the most fun you’ve never had. If you like golf, you like disc golf, you just don’t know it yet. Just like in regular golf, disc golf is you against the course, against yourself. It’s definitely a game that’s played between the ears.
The Dry Creek Golf Course is located behind the Main Building on South Piedmont’s Old Charlotte Highway campus. It is free and open to the public. For more information about the course, visit https://udisc.com/courses/dry-creek-at-spcc-rTlE.