Disc golf has found its home in parks and green spaces of all different shapes and sizes. Sometimes those spaces are dedicated to disc golf, and sometimes they're in busy parks. Designers haven't always thought safety first, and that can lead to a variety of safety concerns once the course gets busy.

As disc golf course designers, our job always begins with safety, or at least, it should. It's more than following simple rules like not throwing over pathways or roads. It includes looking at long-term plans for the space, planning for the course to grow in popularity, and thinking through worst-case scenarios. In short, one of the biggest responsibilities we have is planning for tomorrow, not simply planning for what it looks like today.

A good course design can still have risk. By recognising danger and understanding the implications of our decisions, we can mitigate that risk and avoid creating situations that lead to conflict or injury.

Before we even get to designing around dangers, I'm a firm believer that knowledge is the easiest way to mitigate danger, and signage is the best way to educate people about potential danger. Signage and early prevention is your cheapest insurance policy!

The only way to assess safety is to look at each scenario and the criteria that lead to what could be considered a safe hole. This starts with the "spray pattern". Technically, the spray pattern is a “circle sector” (wikipedia), or the area of a circle enclosed by two radii and an arc, beginning at the tee pad. In layman's terms, it's the number of degrees to the left and right of the target that we expect players to throw into by mistake.

Novice designers often ignore this because they rely on "common sense", or design for their own skill level. These are mistakes. Common sense is not a rule, and even higher skilled players grip lock shots. Every scenario must take into account elevation, wind, obstacles, kicks, distance, ground cover, canopy and more.

Disc golf will always have risk, but risk assessment considers severity and likelihood. A 330ft / 100m hole in the middle of a busy park will have a much higher likelihood of an accidental strike than a 150ft / 45m hole. This is why our first job as a designer is to choose a hole/course design that fits the size of the space we're working with.

There is no hard and fast answer to the question “what's the right spray pattern”. The real answer is “it depends”. If dangers still exist after considering all aspects and an interaction is more than plausible, then a real designer will ditch it and come up with a better plan. It's not only okay to ditch your first design and start from scratch, it's a regular part of the design process.

In conclusion, our first job as a designer is choosing a layout and routing that is suitable to the space we're working with, and there is no hard and fast rule about the correct spray pattern; it simply depends.