How did you start playing?

[mhough]

I was at a water park in Kansas City in 1984 and there was a DG course in the park between the slides. I watched what they were doing and thought it looked like fun and then went home and set up an object course on our farm. I was 14. Still have the hand-written notes of where the tees and objects were. I played it with a frisbee. It was 10 years later before I saw DG again and got hooked.

 

[Dan Ensor]

poorly

 

[tstack10]

This thread getting resurrected?

 

[bcos4life]

My buddy called me and asked to play. I had never heard of it, but thought "What the hell." I went out and sucked, but liked it. I went with him again, but picked up a beginner set. Never looked back.

 

[4th Rock]

Took some time off of college and was bored. I've always notices the courses Nac has, and out of curiosity I went to Academy, bought a few discs, and got hooked. I came from an Ultimate Frisbee background and DG just clicked with me.

 

[MJanert]

Recently some friends and I were throwing a cheap frisbee around in the backyard. They both kept commenting on how accurate my throws were and it got me thinking about the sport. My brother plays every now and then and he's got a friend who's VERY into DiscGolf.

I have a habit of finding a sport I'd enjoy, and diving right into it. I went bowling, a week later I had my own ball drilled to fit my hand. I build models, have only built 4 maybe 5 in total, but have over 100 models in my closet waiting to be built.

So I went to the local DiscGolf store and was looking around for a set of discs for a beginner. I asked a customer there if he knew anything about it and he practically told me a quick summary of what I should know about my first discs. He handed me an Innova Leopard and Shark and then said "you know, you may as well just go to Academy and pick up an Innova Starter Set"

"They have these same discs at Academy?"

"Yah and cheaper. I was unknowingly setting you up with the same discs they include in the set, plus it'd be cheaper than it is here. Especially if you're just starting, I think that would be the better option."

Went to Academy, picked out my own colors of the Leopard, Shark, and Aviar. I went to a park the next day to get the feel of how the discs handled and started to do pretty good after a while. I left my bag in the middle of the field and would walk a good distance away from it and take turns throwing each disc trying to get it as close as possible.

The next day I went to a DiscGolf course and tried it out and I had a blast. Not the easiest course, but a lot of the holes were very fun to play. I lost a disc in the water, but crawled in to find it and ended up finding another unmarked disc in there as well.

So I've only played one game, but I already have my own Fade Crunch bag, 4 discs and a mini, a DGA Mach Lite that should be here on Sunday, and I'm loving it already. Seems like a very fun sport so far and it can only get better.

 

[tstack10]

Recently some friends and I were throwing a cheap frisbee around in the backyard. They both kept commenting on how accurate my throws were and it got me thinking about the sport. My brother plays every now and then and he's got a friend who's VERY into DiscGolf.

I have a habit of finding a sport I'd enjoy, and diving right into it. I went bowling, a week later I had my own ball drilled to fit my hand. I build models, have only built 4 maybe 5 in total, but have over 100 models in my closet waiting to be built.

So I went to the local DiscGolf store and was looking around for a set of discs for a beginner. I asked a customer there if he knew anything about it and he practically told me a quick summary of what I should know about my first discs. He handed me an Innova Leopard and Shark and then said "you know, you may as well just go to Academy and pick up an Innova Starter Set"

"They have these same discs at Academy?"

"Yah and cheaper. I was unknowingly setting you up with the same discs they include in the set, plus it'd be cheaper than it is here. Especially if you're just starting, I think that would be the better option."

Went to Academy, picked out my own colors of the Leopard, Shark, and Aviar. I went to a park the next day to get the feel of how the discs handled and started to do pretty good after a while. I left my bag in the middle of the field and would walk a good distance away from it and take turns throwing each disc trying to get it as close as possible.

The next day I went to a DiscGolf course and tried it out and I had a blast. Not the easiest course, but a lot of the holes were very fun to play. I lost a disc in the water, but crawled in to find it and ended up finding another unmarked disc in there as well.

So I've only played one game, but I already have my own Fade Crunch bag, 4 discs and a mini, a DGA Mach Lite that should be here on Sunday, and I'm loving it already. Seems like a very fun sport so far and it can only get better.

Awesome story. As I've read on here many time before. Welcome to the addiction. Have fun.

 

[DesertFox]

First time I ever played was about 3-4 years ago with a buddy that moved away but came down to hang out, and invited two others to play. Played a local 9 holer and taught us the most basic rules and throw. I remember thinking it was pretty cool, but didn't catch my attention for some reason.

Fast forward to February 2013. My older brother and his friends randomly starting playing around this time and kept talking about it and my brother would go on and on about it. I remembered about the one time i had played and decided what the hell and joined them to play. Went to Academy and thought most discs were the same so i picked a disc out of the clearance rack and the cheapest putter I could find. The two discs? Max weight Orion LS and a 172 Challenger. Needless to say, I could never beat them because they actually got the starter sets. I was determined to beat them (competitive) and kept going with them any chance I could. One day I noticed a big jump in skills between them and me, so I looked online for any advice. Pretty much spent that whole day learning
just everything about disc golf and in the process found out about DGCR. Took a week off of playing and went to a field and practiced everything I had learned. Next time we played, I finally got my first win after about 20-30 rounds.

A few weeks ago, I got the course record at the same park where I first played and had my first 1000+ rated round (per easy scorecard) Man...I've come a long way...

 

[Shmacka]

We played daily on an object course that began on the fire escape of our frat house in Illinois. We chucked ultimate lids, and wandered around campus having a good time. Fast forward a couple of years, I Made up my own object course not far from the one at Interlocken's East Park, in Broomfield. I'd step out at lunch, but none of my cube farm mates were motivated to join me.
Several years after that, I discovered that the current 9 basket configuration at the park. Two thanksgivings ago, I brought a brother in-law and two Nephews-in-law out there for a round. I've not looked back, and now I have bags, discs out the yazoo, lots of time dedicated to the game, standing pickup rounds to manage, and a blog about disc golf. Hmmmm. Is it windy, or is it nice out? What's that?

Well, I've had fun, but it's nice out, and it's time to throw!

Cheers!

 

[Boneman]

15 pages of responses so this will probably get buried, but here it goes anyway...

I threw my first disc last year at the ripe old age of 47. I had first heard of the sport back in the 80's in my hometown of Edmonton, Alberta where these strange baskets had suddenly sprung up one day in Rundle Park in the east end of the city. Over the next 30 years I hadn't given it a second thought, and didn't know a thing about it.

Now I live in Grande Prairie, a city of 60,000 about five hours north. A couple of local 20-something's approached the city last year and received a grant of $25,000 to install the area's first course in the community's park system. My older brother and I noticed the first tee while driving by one day and decided we wanted to give it a try. The only problem was that neither of us owned a frisbee. A few weeks later on the way home from a vacation, he stopped at Jasper and picked up a couple of cheap $4 souvenir throwing discs at a gift shop, and the following weekend we headed out to the course. It was still a lark at this point, just something to try once because it was there.

We had a blast. We didn't keep score, we just played the course, and as soon as we came off we both knew we had to do this again. We started looking into it a little more and discovered that not only were there specialized "discs" that we're used for this sport, but that there was a place in town that sold them. So my brother went down to pick us up a couple. He walked up to the counter and asked for two golf frisbees (one for each of us). The guy replied, "No problem. What kind do you want?" My brother said, "What kind do I want?" The guy said, "Yeah, what kind. You got drivers, you got midranges, and you got putters. What kind do you want?" My brother said, "You're kidding, right?"

He walked out with a pair of Stingrays, which have worked out fairly well for us. I now have 10 discs in my collection, of which I use four, and we get together three times a week to play this wonderful little course that these two young guys designed. And we're not the only ones, apparently. There are now four places in town that sell golf discs, and they all say they can't keep them on the shelves.

Ive since come to learn how much there is to this game, and how deceptively difficult and technical it is. And yet at the same time, it's accessible in a way that is contrary to so many other sports. I've always been a competitive guy but I also have the misfortune of not being particularly good at anything I like. And if I'm not good at something I tend to lose interest. So while I may still struggle to hit reach 200 feet from the tee, I can still sink an occasional putt that I have no business making, or bomb an approach to within a couple of feet from the basket if all the stars align, so the sense I get is that good things are attainable. That's a feeling I never had when I played, something like regular golf.

My only regret is that I never picked up a disc the first time I drove by that course in Rundle Park all those years ago.

 

[ihatepickles]

I've always loved Ultimate since I first played in college. Life got busy and I got fatter than I'd like... so in 2013 I started losing the weight and by 2014 I was in fine enough shape again to huck the 'bee. Let me tell you, at 38 you're at a huge disadvantage to the 20 year olds chasing the disc.

I wasn't very competitive in Ultimate anymore, but I knew the strategy well enough. My throws were awful though, not much zip on them and poor accuracy. I started watching Youtube and working on the throw. I might not be much of a cutter now but I figured I could handle the disc well enough if I worked on the throws...

So it was Youtube that brought me to disc golf. Researching better grips and pull technique bled over to disc golf videos pretty quickly. I didn't even remember this until I saw the DG vids, but I actually played some DG in college as well. We played on an object golf course and it was just screwing around with an Ultimate lid back then too.

I haven't picked the Ultimate disc back up since I found disc golf. I like that I can play solo or with friends. It's intoxicating to rip a disc on a perfect line and watch it all the way back to Earth.

So, I figure this thread is the right spot to drop my 100th post onto. I started playing in June 2014 and somewhere around 150 round of disc golf played since then. My 2015 goal is to play 365 rounds!

 

[ballardthedome]

I played Footbag Net for many years (hackey sack volleyball) and at the tournaments for that, they would play Footbag Golf. I got addicted to that and played every Sunday morning in GG Park in SF for about a decade. Eventually the few other people I played Footbag Golf with had to stop for various reasons and so I went looking for something to replace it. Found Disc Golf and was instantly addicted.

I weep for the years of DG I missed.

 

[simpletwist]

As an aging hippie I was playing catch with a beach lid with my Deadhead gf at Beaver Island SP. It was at a family reunion. As luck would have it my family's pavilion was right near the basket for #2 and tee box for #3. AHA! So that's what those things were for. I speculated some sort of deer feeding thing. The Greek and I were instantly intrigued. The very next week I saw 3 Wham-O frisbee golf sets at Wal-Mart. I bought all three. We played our 1st round the next day and we were instantly hooked. Seven years later, 100s of discs, a marriage, scores of events, leagues, etc wwe're still hooked. We even made a couple of rounds a part of our European honeymoon!

Now I've made dozens of friends, won a few $$$, recorded a half dozen aces, won some medals, and my latest achievement is getting my son and his family hooked. Not bad for a partially disabled 61 year old man.

My one regret is I found this sport too late in life.

 

[sumo21]

I was tutoring a group of people in math. Found out one of the tutees served in the military, like myself. We hit it off after that. Then we started hanging out, chillin like villains and he gave me rides home from school. Then I noticed his bag and asked him about it. After that I bought a DX Archangel and practiced my throwing. So the story goes and keeps on going.

 

[Cripes]

I was a freshman in college back in 2004. I had played target style disc golf with ultimate disc before, but I don't think I had ever even seen a disc golf basket. The guys living in the room next door were locals and took my roommate and I out to the local course. We only had to play one round with the ultrastars before we realized we needed real disc.

I remember my first trip to PIAS and marveling at all the nice pearly champion disc that were in stock back then. Like a lot of the other folks in this thread the guys that introduced me didn't stay with it, but my roommate and I continued to play several times a week until we graduated.

After I got out of school I rarely played until last summer I showed up for a doubles game on a whim and have been re-addicted ever since.

 

[spinachd]

Taking my kids to the Edina (MN) pool in 2007. The pool has a course next to it. Went to Sportmart and bought a Viper and Aviar. Turns out to be a great sport to learn when a stroller is a major part of your life.

 

[ratskrad]