Becoming a Disc-Tossing Basket Case
The wind blew light droplets of rain in my face. The ground was muddy and a copse of trees stood defiantly, daring me to find a way inside of it to my target which amounted to a metal tray surrounded by chains mounted on a pole.
It was my first time and it was as ugly as the weather and the basket’s inaccessible disposition. My first toss wobbled insanely before smacking into the ground and landing about 50 feet from the concrete tee pad, putting it about 200 feet from the target.
I was hooked.
Egged on by my daughter and boy friend who discovered it over the summer, this was my first round of a sport that doesn’t piss off neighbors by its noise like pickleball, doesn’t require a reservation or, in most cases, cost a dime to play beyond the purchase of a set of projectiles.
Don’t you dare care call it “Frisbee Golf.” That’s old school. More on that in a bit. Avoid “the look” and use the correct term, disc golf.
Oh, you may have seen the baskets on poles around parks and wondered what they are. I had heard of a game where people tossed Frisbees at targets and thought it was just a backyard game like cornhole or badminton.
I was vaguely curious about it but never followed through. I’ve owned a few Frisbees over the years and actually still have one somewhere in my basement.
Back in October my daughter told me she and her boy friend, who’s really a life partner told me they’d been playing disc golf and loved it so much they started playing almost every day at one of the many courses in the Detroit metro area. Really? Who knew?
My bad knees kinda put a damper in my longtime habit of playing pickup ice hockey and she thought this would be a fun substitute. They invited me to join them on a visit to Ypsilanti where, holy crap, is the biggest store devoted to disc golf in Michigan….The Throw Shop!
We get there and there’s row after row of discs in every color, size and configuration. My eyes hurt from the chromatic blast.
It turns out a disc isn’t just a disc. They are divided by drivers for long tosses, mid-range discs for tosses not so long and putters, for that last fling at the basket. The disc also carry a set of four numbers that indicated speed, fade, glide and turn. I won’t get into what all that means except to say the numbers matter when choosing discs. You can read the details here.
Our putters after successfully hitting the basket.
Just like the other golf you have to put together a set of discs to carry in a bag on the course. Using the numbers as a guide you select the right disc for the shot. New discs cost $15 and $30 or more, but there’s a great selection of used discs at half the cost you can buy just to try the sport.
That’s what I did at one of those Play it Again Sports shops. It wasn’t long, though, before I sprung for a brand new driver. I’m told devoted disc golfers carry more than a dozen discs. My daughter calls them her “friends.” Sometimes they are. Sometimes, at least in my neophyte hands, they’re bastards.
After spinning my head at the Throw Shop we walked across the parking lot to one of the adjacent courses that costs exactly zero to play. That’s where I had my initial encounter with the evil oak trees.
Daughter and BF gave me instructions and encouragment. That’s after I had watched many minutes of disc golf how-to videos on YouTube. It was obvious it takes more than that to master the sport.
I attempted to replicate the good form presented to me in person and online and I did manage to pull off enough good throws to warrant a few “not baaaadddds!” or “there you go’s!” And just like what disc golfers derisively call “ball golf” I found every tree, water trap and bramble bush while slipping through the mud to retrieve my disc and toss again.
Then I’d make a long putt. Nothing like that sound of the disc hitting the chains and dropping into the basket. It’s enough encouragement to keep up your morale and anticipation of moving on to the next hole.
At some point you’re so enamored with the exercise, fresh air, challenge and walk through the courses that can take you on forested trails, hilltops, around small bodies of water or open fields stopping to toss the disc is just a value-added aspect of the entire enterprise.
It’s important at this point to take a step back to provide some context so you don’t think I’m just some crazy old man wandering around tossing round plastic plates indiscriminately in public places.
So yes, the sport did begin as Frisbee Golf, promoted by the man who invented the Frisbee, a guy named “Steady” Ed Headrick, who invented the Frisbee as an employee of the company that made them, Wham-O.
Frisbee inventor and creator of disc golf, “Steady” Ed Headrick. Courtesy Connecting Directors
To make a long story short, Headrick promoted the sport, founded the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) then ran into other folks who began playing with non-Frisbee discs and therefore the name change to the more generic disc gold.
He eventually ceded control of the PDGA in 1984 to Ted Smethers in Rochester, N.Y. by handing him a bottle of Rochester-brewed Genesee Cream Ale.
You can read the full story of disc golf’s history here.
Note: My wife is from Rochester and I’ve quaffed many bottles and cans of “Jenny Cream.” It’s damned good, unlike regular Genesee Beer, about which my late father used to muse, “how do they get that big horse over that little bottle?”
Ahem. Sorry. Anyway, there’s no shortage of places to play. According to UDisc, as of February, 2023, there are 14,048 disc golf courses on this planet, of which there are about 9,000 in the United States, more than any other country.
There’s even a disc golf course in Anarctica. Heh..a basket on a pole at a pole.
Ross Island disc golf course at McMurdo Base, Anarctica. Courtesy UDisc.com
So far the cold weather hasn’t kept me from playing as often as I can, although not often enough. I just layer up, wear really crappy old sneakers for mucking around on the muddy trails, step up to the concrete tee pad and attempt to improve my form and results.
It’s great exercise, inexpensive and challenging enough to keep me motivated without getting discouraged. You know what’s also great about disc golf? It ain’t pickleball.
