Business Spotlight: On the Fly

A one-man show known as Disc Golf Monkey is riding the wave of a fast-growing outdoor sport popularized at community parks.

Disc golf grew its roots throughout the 1970s, and the Professional Disc Golf Association credits Rochester, N.Y., as the sport’s birthplace. Russ Burns got his introduction in 1992.

A few years later, Burns played in every amateur tournament he could and turned pro in 1998. The next year, a business began to take shape.

“I just started buying some discs and selling them on the side to pay for my play,” Burns says.

Today, Disc Golf Monkey distributes some 10 brands of discs, runs over 20 annual tournaments in three states, builds disc golf baskets and designs courses. Burns does it all – and right from his Springfield home. In recent weeks, for instance, he personally delivered 19 baskets to a course near Jefferson City and finished installing a course he designed for the Two Rivers Bike Park developed by Matt O’Reilly.

One thing Burns is not: a businessman. A scholarship baseball player at Evangel University and member of the 1996 Heartland of America conference championship team, the unconventional Burns has never written a business plan, doesn’t track annual revenues, and he’s unaware of the number of courses he’s designed.

“I could tell you the courses I didn’t design,” he says, pointing to those in Ozark, Springfield-Oak Grove, Ash Grove and others.

He finally determines it’s over 30 courses, in maybe seven states.

“I’m not a business guy,” he says. “I just love doing the sport and watching it go. I just try to make a living out of it as long as it will last.”

The number of disc golf courses has at least doubled every 10 years since 1985, and there are now over 4,000 U.S. courses, according to the 24,000-member PDGA. There are five courses in Springfield and 20 within 50 miles, including private courses on the True Life Church campus north of town and Joe’s DGC in Ozark.

Burns acknowledges he might need to change his methodologies as the sport continues to grow. I could definitely use a hand,” he says, adding there’s no timeline for his first hire.

Another number that eludes him: the professional titles he’s won at PDGA tournaments.

“I don’t keep track of that,” he says.

According to the PDGA, he’s won 22 professional tournaments and collected over $9,100 in career earnings.

Burns does know his all-time best score: 15 under par to win a tournament in Nixa. In April, he finished first in the over-40 Masters division of the Airpark Open by Prodigy Disc, and Burns’ prize money this season is $550 from eight tournaments, according to his player stats on PDGA.com.

Disc Golf Monkey ran the Airpark Open, one of 22 tour stops this year, starting in January with the Bear Hollow Ice Bowl in Ava. Burns says tournament organization and related merchandise sales represent 60 percent of his business, with a third in basket manufacturing and the remainder in course design.

The tournaments average over 90 players each competition, a key selling point to municipal officials seeking to draw people to their communities.

“We’ll bring 80-90 outside people to the Jefferson City area,” says Rod Braman, an officer of the Jefferson City Disc Golf Club, which in October will host the eighth-annual Jeff City Open. “We pull people from St. Louis, Kansas City, Springfield and some out of state.”

The 100-member club also is behind a new course in nearby Holts Summit that purchased baskets from Burns. Braman says Disc Golf Monkey earned the business with a $6,000 bid for 19 baskets.

“Other basket companies charged for powder coating the baskets,” Braman says, noting the community organizers sought bright colors for the heavily wooded course.

With the baskets installed July 31 and trees cleared in the fairways waiting to be removed, Braman says the club plans to use the Holts Summit course as a third site in the upcoming three-day tournament. A hobby disc golfer who works as a Missouri Department of Transportation service technician, Braman pitched the course to city officials two years ago.

“This is land that is not being used at all by the city of Holts Summit,” he says. “The presence in a park like that can ward off other activities you don’t want.”

Closer to home, Burns designed a new course at the Two Rivers Bike Park in Highlandville.

He says the course is more challenging than most with four valleys and parallel ridges. “They’ve tried to keep it as natural as possible,” Burns says. “With that repetition, it’s harder to come up with unique holes.”

Then, he had to work around the mountain bike trails. The result is a likely par of 59 or 60 when it opens this month, well above the traditional par of 54. The 18th hole plays 700 feet, but it’s downhill with a 105-foot drop.

“He’s pretty much the foremost designer in this area,” says Matt Blevins, controller of Green Circle Projects, the development arm of the nonprofit course. “The biggest challenge is probably the elevation changes and longer holes.”