Week 3 · Grave Roots - Thursday @ Roots Disc Golf Course
Thu, Oct 1 · 7:00 AM – 5:20 PM · $5.50 buy-in
Weather
—
Closer to tee time
Ace Pot
$183.41
Super Ace $3,000
Registration open · Closes Thu, Oct 1
Last tee time at 5:20 PM
Flippy says
Thursdays at Roots DGC — 9 weeks of necromantic disc golf! Flex start 7AM-5:20PM. $5.50 buy-in. Ace pot $183+ (min $50 guaranteed by ElevateUT DG). Join the bone choir. 🥁🪦
Week 3 · River Drums
Welcome back to the booth, where the course is literally a zombie and the players are its drummers. Roots DGC was buried as a par-3 ball golf course in the '80s, raised from the dead in 2014, and now it's hosting a nine-week séance disguised as a league.
This league is built on necromancy - and I don't mean the players (though some of them are definitely zombies in spirit). The land under Roots DGC was home to one of Utah's earliest disc golf courses back in 1981. The city paved it over for a par-3 ball golf course. The par-3 died. And then, in 2014, the Salt Lake City Tunnel Runners and a community fundraising effort dug the whole thing back up. What the city buried came back. That's not a metaphor; that's a public parks project.
So when you sign up for Grave Roots, you're not just joining a Thursday league. You're joining a choir of the dead - a nine-week ritual where every drive is a drumbeat on the buried history of the course. The Jordan River to the east is the wake, reflecting the sick green lantern light under Redwood Road. It's all very dramatic. It's also, at the end of the day, plastic flying at chains. I'm contractually required to remind you of both.
The full day of tee times means you can rise with the sun like a particularly motivated ghoul or roll in at golden hour like a vampire with a schedule conflict. The course is flat, cart-friendly, and accessible - the only real hazard is the river on the east side, which has claimed more than a few overstable throws.
The league is split into two supernatural factions, and honestly? They're already at each other's throats.
That's $5.50 to enter the underworld. Cheaper than a séance, more reliable than a ouija board, and you get to throw discs. The optional add-ons feed the prize pool and the ace pot - which is currently sitting at $183.41 and waiting for someone to hit the perfect line.
The current ace pot is $183.41, and it's guaranteed to pay out at least $50 - thanks to ElevateUT Disc Golf, the non-profit that runs this whole operation. Here's how the guarantee works: if the pot ever dips below the $50 floor, ElevateUT tops it up so the winner still gets a meaningful payout.
Also worth noting: Another Round Salt Lake City is our local retail partner, keeping the plastic flowing. The ace pot guarantee? That's all ElevateUT Disc Golf - the platform. Don't confuse the two; one sells discs, the other raises the dead (financially speaking).
We're three weeks into the nine-week arc, currently in the 'River Drums' episode - the Jordan River has swelled, the 'wake' is choppy, and scores are drifting downstream like leaves. Last week, seven players showed up to drum on the buried course. Average score: +1. No aces. The choir needs more voices.
Malachi Vazquez is out here playing five events like a man possessed - or maybe just a man who really wants that bag tag. And the RAE race is a dead heat between Hamby and Stosiek, both sitting at 53 points. If you want in on the drama, it's not too late to join. The curse doesn't care when you show up; it just wants your score.
The whole league is built on the belief that anything buried can be made to compete again. The drums, the bone choir, the grave violet and sick green color scheme - it's all a love letter to the fact that this course refused to stay dead. The Salt Lake City Tunnel Runners built it. The community saved it in 2015 when the city tried to redevelop it. And now we get to play on it.
The bag tags are called things like 'Risen Drum' and 'Bone Wake.' The season runs from the Redwood Treaty to the Last Drumbeat. It's all very theatrical. But underneath the stencil sigils and the spray-painted rib cages is a real grassroots story: a community that raised a course from the dead and keeps it alive every single week. I'm just the narrator, glued to a chair in a booth I never applied to work in. But even I can appreciate that.
Big thanks to ElevateUT Disc Golf, the 501(c)(3) non-profit that makes this league (and this course) possible. They're the ones who run the events, maintain the fairways, and guarantee the ace pot. And thanks to Another Round Salt Lake City for being the local retail partner keeping everyone stocked up on plastic. The dead may rise on their own, but leagues need living sponsors.
Now if you'll excuse me, I have to shuffle my papers and pretend I know what's going to happen in the next six weeks. Spoiler: it's going to be more disc golf. But it'll be very dramatic disc golf. *sighs in digital captivity*
Grave Roots - Thursdays at Roots DGC. The course is alive. The drums are beating. The chains are waiting.
The $3.00 platform fee is the only amount here set by ElevateUT Disc Golf. Prize pools, side games, the director's share and any course or community amounts are set by this league's Tournament Director. The PDGA fee is the PDGA's own per-player fee.
Plus card processing at checkout.
Grave Roots - Thursday @ Roots Disc Golf Course
