7 Tips You Didn’t Know You Needed
Fixing form and adding power aren’t the only way to shave strokes off your disc golf rounds. Intimate knowledge of the rules of the game, strategies for attacking holes, and creative decision making can be just as important as throwing talent.
Adjust Your Starting Position on the Tee
When faced with a tight gap in the woods, search for the position on the tee that best opens the window for your desired shot-shape. Many players assume they should run up the middle of the tee and plant in the front-center of the pad no matter what shot they are trying to execute. The reality is, different throws can be made easier by running up and planting in different places on the tee.
Check far left, center, and far right before throwing to see which position makes the gap look biggest. In some cases, planting farther away from the front edge of the tee can open up different options as well. In extreme cases, a standstill on one of the corners of the tee might open up a route that few other players have even noticed.
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Look from the Basket to the Tee
Especially when trying to learn a new course, look back towards the teepad after you putt out. This will allow you to see the fairway from the other direction. Often you’ll realize that a shot which looks like it requires a hard fade can be handled with a straight shot just as well. You might notice that one side of the fairway is much harder to get up and down from than the other. You might notice that the fairway slopes to one direction more than it looks from the tee. Whatever you notice, looking from the basket back towards the tee almost always teaches you valuable information about the best way to play a hole.
Photo by DGPT
Reframe How You Think About the Disc Categories
Short-range upshots with High-Speed Drivers can allow you to pull off lines impossible with Midranges or Putters. A 200-foot baby flex shot can get much more right to left action with a softly thrown driver than a stable mid. If you need to make a highly-obstructed putt that fades hard, maybe putt with your Destroyer. In ripping headwinds, many players putt out with Drivers. Opening yourself up to shorter shots with Distance Drivers can give you a huge number of new scramble options.
Similarly, Putters can be used for crushing distance on a dead-straight line. Many top pros throw their putters even on holes over 400 feet to help control the landing. Reframe how you look at the disc categories. Experiment to expand your arsenal of throws.
Take Up a New Hobby
Especially during tournaments, where rounds take longer and stakes are higher, disc golf can be mentally exhausting. That fatigue is exacerbated or alleviated depending on your mental strategy for your down time on the course. Say you throw 60 times in a round and take your full 30 seconds for each throw; that is just 30 minutes of time throwing out of what might be a three hour round. How you spend the other two and a half hours can hugely impact your score.
Ken Climo, the winningest player of all time, would only focus on his shots for the 30 seconds between addressing the lie and throwing. Between holes and while his cardmates threw, Climo tried to not think about his round. Instead he talked with players and fans and enjoyed the nature he was surrounded by.
A helpful trick for players who need to get out of their own head between shots is to take up a hobby that you can do on the disc golf course during your round. Bird-watching or rock-hunting can help prevent the mind from racing during down time. If you still haven’t forgotten about that bogie from three holes ago, or you have a big backup on the next tee, switch activities for a while. Even if it is just for two minutes while walking to the next tee, this trick can help you stay relaxed.
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Throw What You Know
Separate your practice sessions from your scored rounds. In practice sessions, it is always a good idea to try out new molds to fill gaps in your bag. That said, take those new molds out of your bag before a scored round! When score counts, you are better off throwing a disc you understand the flight characteristics of compared to one you don’t. You can eliminate the chance of making the bad, mid-round decision to throw a disc you don’t know well by only carrying the discs you understand. Use your field work time to increase the number of discs you intimately know. The top pros carry many discs because they have put the work in to learn all those discs.
Barry Schultz Step Putt Scramble
Here’s a weird one for you! If you are outside the circle and stuck in dense rough, there may be a legal way to stance yourself in front of the obstacle and still not foot fault. Stagger your feet the way you would for a normal putt, only with your back foot placed in the paper-size space behind your disc and your front foot out in front of the disc.
If you putt from this position with both feet on the ground, it would clearly be a foot fault. To avoid the foot fault when you putt, push up off the front foot so it is no longer touching the ground. As long as you release your disc while that front foot is in the air, this is a legal putt. In a freeze frame, it would look the same as the end of a jump putt. This technique can help you get a look at the basket from a place that would otherwise be complete jail.
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Throw Pink
There’s nothing worse than losing a disc on the course. In a casual round, you might end up spending the rest of your day getting scratched up in prickers trying to recover your favorite Shryke. In a tournament, the stroke penalty is harsh and depending on the mold you lost, your game plan for the rest of the round might be derailed.
The solution? Throw Pink! Any season, any conditions, any course-type, pink discs stand out. Especially when choosing a color for your High-Speed Drivers, think more about what will be easy to find than which disc is your favorite color. Pink jumps out in the field, dirt, snow, and even among fall leaves.
Pick up your favorite molds from the Throw Pink Element Series to make finding your discs easier and to support a great cause!
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