The Complete Guide to Disc Golf

Chapter 1: What Is Disc Golf and Why People Love It

Imagine you are walking through a park on a sunny Saturday morning. You take a left past a pond, and you see a group of people standing in a grassy field, each holding a round, flat disc. One of them winds up and hurls it - not like a frisbee at a barbecue, but with an athletic, practiced snap. The disc flies straight for a hundred feet, then curves gently to the right and lands near a tall metal pole with a chain basket hanging from it. Someone claps. Someone else walks up and drops a disc into the basket with a soft rattling sound. That is disc golf.

Here is what it actually is, stripped of any mystery: you and a few friends (or just you, by yourself) walk a course that is usually laid out through a park, a forest, or a hilly field. The course is made up of a series of "holes." But there is no hole in the ground. Instead, there is a metal basket on a pole, about two and a half feet tall, with chains hanging down from the top. Your job, on each hole, is to get your disc from a designated starting point (called a tee pad - usually a small rectangle of concrete or rubber) into that basket using as few throws as possible.

That is the whole game. You count your throws, you write them on a scorecard,