U.S. Disc Golf Courses
Grant Kelly
5/6/2021
Area of Interest
One of my favorite summers activities is to go disc golfing. Disc golfing is a newer sport that is increasing in popularity. I got introduced to it by some friends who were just as bad at regular golf as I am. There are thousands of courses in a vast majority of cities thorough out the United States. My goal is to look at how popular disc golf is in certain locations and the quality of those courses.
Data Preparation
The data I am using comes from Kaggle and is in a CSV file format, accessible for download via Onedrive. The data is scraped from the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) website. Below is the table of the entire data set.
Data Dictionary
| Variable | Description |
|---|---|
| ID | Unique ID for Each Course |
| NAME | Name of Course |
| CITY | City the Course is Located |
| STATE | State the Course is Located |
| ZIP | ZIP code of Course Location |
| HOLECOUNT | Total Number of Holes at the Course |
| Rating | Overall Rating of Course out of 5 |
| LATITUDE | Latitude of Course |
| LONGITUDE | Longitude of Course |
Descriptive Analysis
Visual 1: Total Disc Golf Courses By State
| state | count |
|---|---|
| Texas | 472 |
| Wisconsin | 350 |
| Minnesota | 343 |
| California | 333 |
| Michigan | 308 |
| Iowa | 292 |
| Illinois | 287 |
| North Carolina | 279 |
| Ohio | 270 |
| Kansas | 266 |
| Pennsylvania | 208 |
| Colorado | 204 |
| Indiana | 188 |
| Missouri | 188 |
| Florida | 182 |
| Oklahoma | 173 |
| Tennessee | 157 |
| Oregon | 145 |
| Georgia | 143 |
| New York | 139 |
| Virginia | 138 |
| Washington | 134 |
| South Carolina | 125 |
| Alabama | 122 |
| Arkansas | 116 |
| Kentucky | 115 |
| Nebraska | 110 |
| Idaho | 100 |
| Mississippi | 95 |
| Utah | 78 |
| Arizona | 77 |
| South Dakota | 77 |
| Maine | 75 |
| West Virginia | 70 |
| North Dakota | 64 |
| Montana | 63 |
| Massachusetts | 62 |
| Louisiana | 58 |
| New Mexico | 55 |
| Maryland | 51 |
| Vermont | 44 |
| Wyoming | 42 |
| New Jersey | 40 |
| Alaska | 38 |
| Nevada | 38 |
| New Hampshire | 32 |
| Connecticut | 31 |
| Hawaii | 14 |
| Delaware | 13 |
| Rhode Island | 4 |
Visual 2: Course Ratings by Largest Ohio Cities 
Visual 3: Relationship Between the Number of Holes and Rating 
Visual 4: Courses Available in the Cincinnati Area
| name | city | rating | holeCount |
|---|---|---|---|
| Burnet Woods (Univ. of Cincinnati) | Cincinnati | NA | 9 |
| Embshoff Woods | Cincinnati | NA | 9 |
| Heritage Park | Cincinnati | 3 | 18 |
| Johnson Hills Park | Cincinnati | 4 | 18 |
| Mt. Airy Forest | Cincinnati | 3 | 18 |
| St. Bernard Disc Golf Course | Cincinnati | NA | 8 |
| Surge Disc Golf Course | Cincinnati | NA | 9 |
| Winton Woods (Hamilton County) | Cincinnati | 2 | 18 |
| Woodland Mound Park | Cincinnati | 3 | 18 |
Visual 5: Top 5 States by Average Course Rating 
Secondary Data
For my secondary data, I pulled tweets from Twitter using the rtweet package. I compiled the data into a CSV file and uploaded it to my OneDrive. I pulled 500 observations containing the word ‘discgolf’ or ‘@pdga,’ which is the Professional Disc Golf Association twitter page. I then performed a sentiment analysis using those tweets. I am curious to see if disc golf is growing in popularity.
Sentiment Analysis Visual
The bar graph below displays the sentiments associated with disc golfing. There is a great deal of positivity towards the sport. 