By ERIC PLUMMER

Sports editor

CLARK FORK — It’s far from a finished product, but the new Clark Fork golf and frisbee golf combo course is currently open and ready for play, starting with a fundraising two-man scramble tournament on Sunday, July 2.

One of the main driving forces behind the course is Douglas Speelmon, a 73-year-old builder and a graduate of Clark Fork High School in 1964.

He’s spent the better part of the past two-and-a-half years helping sculpt nine holes out of a swath of forest behind the track in Clark Fork. Right now it’s still fairly rustic, and don’t expect linoleum greens just yet, but you can still get out and smack a golf ball around or hurl a disc at the metal baskets free of charge.

“Play all day and all night, I don’t care, burn it up,” said Speelmon, who had just finished mowing the track. “You ain’t gonna hurt it. After we get going, it will be donations.”

Speelmon has left his legacy on a couple of other patches of earth, including working for more than a year on the Washington State University Golf Course in Pullman, where he learned a lot about course design.

He also remembers working with his father Melvin Speelmon Sr. on the current football field where the Wampus Cats play on Friday nights every fall.

“My father and I built the football field about 40 years ago,” recalled Speelmon, proudly naming a former NFL player and Super Bowl champion from Clark Fork. “Ron Heller played on that field.”

The scramble on Sunday features a $10 buy in and registration at 8:30 a.m., followed by a shotgun start at 9 a.m., with all proceeds going to future course improvements. The tee boxes, both grass for golf and also the cement pads for disc golf, are all in place.

Since the greens are still a bit bouncy there is a two putt limit during the scramble, and it’s probably wise to prop the ball up on tufts of grass to avoid hitting any rocks.

Disc golfers don’t have to worry about smooth putting greens, just the frisbee golf chain baskets set around the course.

The actual golf course is an 9-hole executive Par 3 that measures more than 1,500 yards, with the longest hole playing at 226 yards and the shortest at 108 yards. Keeping the course mowed falls on Speelmon’s shoulders, which he doesn’t mind a bit.

“It takes me about seven and a half hours,” claims Speelmon. “And about five gallons of diesel.”

Many people and businesses from the community of Clark Fork have donated time, money and labor to get the course to where it is, including Lewis Speelmon, K.C. MacDonald, Travis Kiebert, Phil Kemink and Frank Hammersley among a host of other local volunteers. Speelmon figures more than $40,000 has been donated from start to now.

Pete Cavanaugh, who graduated from Clark Fork in 1985, recently poured the pads for the frisbee tee boxes. Kemink, principal at Clark Fork High School, had some beautiful blue and yellow flags made for the pins on each hole.

There are some tight spaces and narrow fairways through trees, then some more wide open terrain. There is also plenty of local wildlife, to say nothing of the view of Scotchman Peaks.

“This is bird city out here, and we have a couple of resident white tail does,” noted Speelmon, who is hoping the course gets a lot of use. “It’s a pleasure watching people play on it. I’m proud, happy as hell.”

Eric Plummer can be reached by email at eplummer@bonnercountydailybee.com and follow him on Twitter @EricDailyBee.