My journey from ultimate frisbee to disc golf
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Let me start by saying that I love ultimate frisbee. I lived and breathed ultimate for 4 years at Williams College, where I was playing meaningful points in our game-to-go to DIII Nationals as a freshmen (we lost). The point of this article is to show my quick post-college transition to disc golf, but I’m still going to freely use a lot of ultimate lingo that might not make sense to folks with no ultimate background. So quickly:
- a cut is when you run a route like Odell Beckham Jr. and leave your defender in the dust (hopefully).
- a sky is when you and your opponent jumps up to catch the disc and you grab it over them, unleash a guttural scream, and in general demoralize your opponent.
- a flick is the same thing as a disc golf forehand.
- a reset is a short, technical throw to “reset” the 10 second timer you have in ultimate.
- a zinger is… okay that’s just my term for throwing a disc like a baseball with absolutely zero touch and putting the onus on your teammate to catch your fastball.
There, now the next paragraph will make sense.
What is interesting is that my love for ultimate has nothing to do with throwing the disc. I was always a guy who reveled in cutting deep and sky-ing my opponents. My teammates complained that I would throw zingers and never look reset because I didn’t have the touch and accuracy for the technical throw. So on the outside, I really wasn’t a candidate to jump ship to disc golf. My athletic aspects that made me stand out when catching a frisbee wouldn’t translate to disc golf.
When I graduated Williams in ‘21, in the middle of the Pandemic and having not played actual ultimate for over a year, I was convinced that my ultimate journey wasn’t going to end there. I believed that I was game enough for one of the many club ultimate teams that exist in New York. I would have never guessed that my ultimate journey was ending, but my frisbee journey was just beginning.
What changed? I had surgery on my leg so I couldn’t run for months. I got fat… well, let’s just say out of shape. I found the Youtube channel JomezPro while trying to entertain myself cooped up in the house all summer. And man, professional disc golf is entertaining!
Jomez owes me nothing but here’s my pitch if you’ve never heard of it before. Golf is boring, so you’d think disc golf is too, but it’s not. Jomez offers free post-production videos, which means that there’s no waiting from one shot to the next. You follow 4 players for an 18-hole odyssey that takes no more than an hour (and it’s Youtube, you can pause any time). You can lean into a specific player’s round and understand how they are attacking the course. And all the while the amazing play-by-play guys are actual disc golf professionals who’ve played the course. So their insight is incredibly valuable and well-explained to novices like me. Watch a round, or just half of one, and you’ll understand what I’m talking about, I promise.
I figured that as there’s no running in disc golf, I could play disc golf sooner than ultimate while I was recovering from surgery. So as soon as I could, I picked up a couple beat-up disc golf discs and well…
The next part is going to be heavy in disc golf lingo, so I feel like I should provide a quick translation to ultimate (the best I can) first:
- hyzer is throwing “outside-in”, conversely an-hyzer is throwing “inside-out.”
- a flex line combines both an-hyzer and hyzer elements and flies in an S-curve, but there’s no real equivalent in ultimate (since it’s not possible with an Ultrastar).
- There are lots of way to say this, but striping a putt is pretty self-explanatory.
- 5x world champ Paul McBeth is the Tom Brady of disc golf.
- James Conrad is author of the “holy shot” in disc golf lore. He has a signature disc called the Envy, which is the holy disc, which is a throwing putter (that’s all the knowledge I’m providing, unfortunately).
- a water carry is when you (pretty much have to) throw your disc over water and hope that you didn’t shank your throw and lose your $15 disc. It’s one of the nerviest and coolest things about disc golf imo.
- a Boss is a popular disc mold by Innova, but that’s not really the kind of boss I’m talking about in the next paragraph.
So… I was throwing 500 feet through the woods on straight hyzer right out of the gate. Striping 50 foot putts like McBeth and throwing my Conrad Envy over a 300 foot water carry like a boss. Trees? Never heard of them. Not once have I ever hit a tree.
Or not. I sucked horrifically! 15 foot putts are near impossible and trees seemed to spite me and thwack my discs even further into the woods. And I could barely throw 275 feet. All this with 4+ years of ultimate experience under my belt!
The important thing was that it was incredibly fun. I always enjoyed the cerebral part of ultimate — the part about field awareness and knowing when to make your move or take risks on defense. That translates super nicely to disc golf, where the mental game runs supreme. How you play is far more dependent on how you think then how skilled you are.
Here’s where I explain why disc golf has kicked ultimate out of my life. Enjoy!
Every disc golf hole seems like an engineering problem to me, and my unique skill set and bag of discs are the tools that I get. Maybe I can forehand my driver on a hyzer angle and have it skip right, right into the green. I think I’ll miss those trees over there if I throw it just right. Or maybe I should just play it safe and throw my midrange directly at the basket, probably end up a bit short, but a lot less chance to mess up. The decision for how to attack each hole is a personal one, and an important one. And you get to make 18 of those decisions in a round. I love solving problems, and there’s just not an equivalent in ultimate. That game is centered a lot less around your brain.
So how about you? Are you someone who might love disc golf (answer: yes!)? I can’t imagine anyone getting through this article without some baseline understanding of how to throw discs, so here’s my pitch to you: try it. You’ll get addicted just like me.
