About Me

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Hi! I’m Charlie Baker. 

Here's how-I-discovered-disc-golf story. Back before COVID, I weighed in at 235 at a regular physical. Got a finger wag from the doc and was told to walk more. Turns out just walking got boring pretty quickly for me. Looking for alternatives, I found a disc golf video on YouTube and was intrigued. 

Disc golf was more or less walking with a purpose.

Reluctant to go to a course and embarrass myself, I got a beginner set and started throwing around my yard (I have 3.5 acres of yard). To start, I painted pink spots on the side of an outbuilding and learned that I literally couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn.

However, I’d always been a fan of games where you throw things or aim things at targets. As a little kid I threw darts and messed around with archery. As a young adult, I threw horseshoes. I became part of a horseshoe club with a handful of guys, whose purpose was to win a trophy or two at the Boone County (Missouri) Fair, which we did.

About the same time, I became obsessed with bass fishing, a more active form of fishing that involves throwing baits at objects seen (above the water) or imagined (under the water).

So, I like games. I’ve worked in the gaming industry for the past 25 years. I liked the randomness of it, plus the notion that a game was something you could get better at as you accumulated knowledge and experience.

In the last few years, I went fishing less and less, due to knee problems and pain. Disc golf became more appealing as I tried to maintain what mobility I had left. I got better at throwing discs at home. I got a basket, learned to putt a little bit, went to a course a few times. And realized that, compared to the KC Metro area, there was a lack of disc golf courses in the Ray County/Richmond area.

In February 2022 I got the news that I needed knee replacement surgery for both knees. Wrapping my head around this idea, I realized that if I wanted any kind of mobility for the rest of my life, I needed to fully commit to rehab and recovery.

It was during rehab that I got the notion of turning my land into a disc golf course. Since I like throwing more than I like walking, I wanted to have a serious disc golf practice area where any shot you see on YouTube, out to 250 feet or so, could be recreated. Recreated and set up so you can take multiple shots. There would be walking involved, just less walking and more throwing than a standard disc golf round.

My slogan became, “Sometimes you want to go play disc golf, and sometimes you have to put in some practice” . . . and that is where Yondar comes in.

So that is the “what?” of Yondar. The “why” matters too. Early in the knee rehab process, when I realized I didn’t want to return to the gaming industry, I thought, why not create a job that requires me to be mobile every day?

Thanks for reading,

Charlie