My friend Karen, who grew up on the East Side and has opinions about everything, told me about the disc golf course at Seaside Park the way you’d tell someone about a good dentist — matter-of-factly, like it was obvious I should already know. I didn’t. I’d walked through Seaside dozens of times and somehow never noticed the tee pads tucked among the old oaks along the park’s western edge.
That was two springs ago. Now I go on rainy Tuesdays specifically, because the course empties out and the fog off the Sound makes the whole thing feel like you’ve wandered into someone else’s moody photograph.
The course runs through the northern stretch of Seaside Park, that long Frederick Law Olmsted–designed greenbelt that runs along Long Island Sound for about a mile and a half on the western end of the city. Most people come to Seaside for the beach, the parking lots on summer weekends, the Portuguese guys grilling on the lawn. The disc golf course quietly occupies its own section, eighteen baskets laid out through a mix of open fairways and tree-lined corridors that require actual shot-shaping if you want to score well.
And it’s free. You bring your own discs — a basic starter set (driver, mid-range, putter) runs maybe thirty dollars at a sporting goods store or on Amazon if you’re new to it — and you just play. No tee times, no ranger, no dress code. On a weekday morning in October, I’ve had the whole course to myself for two hours. On a Saturday in July, there’s a wait at the more popular holes but it moves.
The layout itself is legitimately good. A few holes run straight toward the water with the Sound visible through gaps in the tree line, which sounds distracting but is actually the best kind of distraction. There are doglegs, elevation changes modest enough that you barely notice them until you’re making a putt into a headwind off the harbor. The baskets are well-maintained — the chains ring cleanly when you’re on.
Disc golf has this reputation, fair or not, for attracting a very specific demographic: college guys in hoodies, maybe some retirees. At Seaside, it’s more mixed than that. I’ve played alongside a Haitian family figuring out the rules from a YouTube video, a retired teacher who goes every morning before the park fills up, and two teenagers who were absolutely smoking the course with beat-up discs they’d clearly been throwing for years. The park’s mix is the city’s mix, which is one of the reasons I keep going back.
If you’re new, the course is approachable enough for beginners — just be honest with yourself about pace of play and let faster groups through. Hole four has a sharp left bend that trips people up, and hole eleven is longer than it looks. The park has bathrooms open seasonally near the main beach area, and there’s usually a food truck or two parked along Park Avenue on weekends if you want to make a morning of it.
Parking is straightforward along Park Avenue or inside the park itself. Go early on weekends if you want a casual round; midweek if you want the trees to yourself. Either way, it costs nothing, and you walk out having covered a couple miles of one of the better-designed urban parks in the state without it feeling like exercise. Karen was right. She usually is.
