Yep, it’s the first day of me keeping a journal about all things disc golf. I’m doing way too much science writing and I need some outlet, so here we are.
First, some backstory
I played about 10 years of Ultimate after my ankle told me in no uncertain terms that I should stop fencing at the end of my junior year of college. Doing grad school in Santa Cruz meant that included hanging out with any number of locals on the beautiful East Fields overlooking the Monterey Bay (when the fog wasn’t socked in). And occasional visits to the temple that is the DeLaveaga disc golf course. It’s a monster course up and down the hillsides, culminating in the iconic “Top of the World” shot. Go search YouTube, I’ll wait.
Circa 2006, I picked up a few discs at the disc shack (which I’m not sure has changed in the intervening years) that were “DeLa” stamped. At the time all I knew was that one of the things I had was “a putter” and the others were “drivers”. I’m not sure I even knew that midrange discs even existed yet (think “a 5 iron” for ball golfers). The first several trips to DeLa were…humbling. But fun. Lots of rooting around in the woods trying to find your disc after it rolled down the ravine. Then my roommate who I played with up and moved to London, I got serious about finishing my Ph.D., and the discs got put in the garage.
Fast forward to Fall of 2019
I realized there was a local disc golf course not two miles from my house. I had kind of realized that I was looking for a hobby to pick up again. The kid was well on his way into elementary school, and after a few attempts at a driving range I was contemplating getting into ball golf. One night while scrolling YouTube I came across JomezPro, where there were profession disc golfers (really) playing that same DeLa course I had played. Watching them was mildly gratifying, because it was clear that the course was hard. It wasn’t just my inexperience at the time (okay, it was mostly my inexperience at the time…). I dug my discs out of the garage (all four of them) and wandered over to the course to try a round and was more or less hooked.
Disc Golf was just about to enter a renaissance thanks to a combination of enhanced YouTube coverage, accessibility (you literally need one 10 dollar disc to play and most courses are in public parks), and, of course, COVID-19.
Enter the pandemic
Of course in December 2019 we were all blissfully unaware of the impending doom that was COVID-19. I’d hit my first (and still only) ace (or, “hole in one”) that winter. I’d started investing in copious amounts plastics (more discs), and gotten the kid simultaneously hooked. We can run over to the course and play a few holes in about 20 minutes. Then the pandemic hit and the world stopped.
Disc golf was probably the first thing I actually did venturing outside of the house in about May of 2020. I’d been waking up due to stress at around 6 AM, so figured I might as well head over and get some exercise in. Outside of a few other hearty souls out in the pre-dawn dew, the course was blissfully empty. It was perfect.
As the world slowly came out of the pandemic, rocketed back into lockdown during the winter of 20/21, and then somewhat emerged from things in the Spring, the sport of disc golf had begun to wake up again. The local tournaments had started back up again (except for a few places, no “golf carts” so the social distancing was pretty good). At which point I’d started to try to be a bit more serious about the game.
Hence the name of this tag. “Field Work” is the practice that you put in, throwing in a field and trying to learn the flights of your discs.
Disc basics
You’d think that a frisbee is a frisbee, and they all fly the same. Not so! Somewhere on an old hard drive I have the dynamics model that I made for my first year of grad school looking the air flow (lift) for disc. You’ve got both the rotation (spin) and the forward velocity (speed) to take into account. For Ultimate discs I can pretty easily get one to “hover” by throwing it slow but with a ton of spin. The wing shape (the curve of the edge of the disc) is fully rounded (and nearly spherical), so that the disc flies “neutrally”. As the speed of the disc slows down at the end of its flight, the spin of the disc keeps it more or less flat so that you can get an Ultimate disc to come down almost perfectly flat even if you’re throwing it 70 years downfield.
Disc golf disc are different. While typically just about the same weight as an Ultimate discs, disc golf discs are a lot smaller in diameter. This means that their moment of inertia (how easy it is to change how the disc is spinning) is lower, so that the discs lose their spin as they slow down. What this means is that nearly all discs will “fade” to the left (for a right handed backhand throw) at the end of their flight. When this fade happens, at what speed this happens, and how aggressive the fade is (or, how “stable” the disc is) depends on the mold, the plastic type, and and how “beat in” the disc is (which just means how rough the wing surface is after it’s been thrown into a bunch of trees…which happens on the regular). There are now dozens of manufacturers, each with different discs molds in a variety of plastic types that vary in stiffness. This means that while you have some guess about the flight path of a disc and how stable a disc might be, there’s no way to know how a disc is actually going to fly until you go out and test it.
The opposite aspect is the “under stability” of the disc. We’ve all experienced an under-stable discs. Imagine you’re at a picnic when you’re a kid and someone wants to toss a frisbee. Except if you have parents or a sibling who plays Ultimate, this will most likely be something picked up from the toy aisle. It’s super light, it’s got a flat wing shape, and the second you try to throw it to your friend it immediately does a barrel roll to the right. In this case the disc is too under-stable, and even just with a flick of your wrist and a little power you’re putting too much spin and speed into the disc for it to handle, and it flips over. For disc golf discs, this happens by design and can be controlled by a good thrower. This involves knowledge of how the wind conditions affects the disc flight, arm strength (to impart speed and spin to the disc), and the right “throwing form” to help engage your legs, hips, and back when you throw. Which means practice. Lots of and lots of practice. With every disc that you want to use on the course and in as many different wind conditions as possible. Hence, “field word”.
What goes here?
This is my place to write down notes about the field work that I’m doing, the discs that I’m throwing, and tournaments that I’m playing in. This should help me keep track of the work that I’m doing and any notes on disc as they change over time (which they will, both as I improve as a thrower and as the discs get worn down). So this is much more a personal diary rather than the other sections of my writing here. We’ll see how this goes.