Disc Golf: The Best Golf?

2022-09-26

Disc golf is like golf without the environmental impacts, high costs or pretentiousness. The things I like about golf are present in disc golf. It is a slow methodical game. You can play it with others or solo. It is endlessly entertaining to play because you have personal improvement to cultivate, weather conditions that change and make every round a new challenge, plus different courses to explore.

The differences are all improvements in my opinion. No expensive clubs and other gear to buy, no fees to pay every time you play. It's pretty much a low key way to have an entertaining stroll around a nice park. Discs are cheap and you only need a few (maybe just 1 or 2 even) to have a good time. No reservations required. Just show up and play whenever you want to. I find the clink of the disc hitting the chains more satisfying than a golf ball dropping in the cup too.

We went to a local park a few weeks ago because we wanted to get out of the house and had heard there were some nice walking paths there. The paths were in fact pretty nice and while walking them we noticed a disc golf course. I have been aware of disc golf for a long time and have even known people that played but never tried it myself (in meatspace, more on this in the next paragraph). I suppose I never really gave it a shot because I always had plenty of other activities going on and didn't need another time sink. I have played traditional golf, or what disc golfers call ball golf, quite a bit though not recently. Not exactly because I was real into it but I had friends and family that enjoyed playing so I would play. Fast forward a lot of years, situations change and seeing a nice disc golf course piqued my interest so I picked up a few cheap discs and had a go. Turns out it is a great family activity with young children too. My kids love it because they get to run wild through fields and throw things. Much better to get that out of their systems there instead of in our house.

While I had never played disc golf before I have played a good amount of motion controlled videogame disc golf. The Playstation Move controllers for the PS3 work with a game called Sports Champions. This game has a number of different sports you can play with the motion controllers and one of them is disc golf. If you have a PS3 and the move controllers I highly recommend this game. It is really fun to play and the disc golf feels really natural. Aside from that I have also thrown a lot of frisbees in my day. I mean a LOT. Throwing the frisbee around was one of the regular activities a good friend and roommate of mine would kill time with. So I don't feel like I started from nothing but there is certainly still a learning curve to playing a course and throwing different types of discs.

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