A game of confidence, focus, and skill all wrapped up in a simple flying disc. — Avery Jenkins
Ready to trade balls and clubs for flying discs? Recreational yet highly competitive, disc golf is booming. Advancing from early tin plates to high-tech plastic discs, the sport has grown to include millions of throwers young and old, professional and newbie. What’s the disc golf draw?
Disc golf is similar to ball golf. But instead of hitting balls with clubs, players toss polypropylene (a type of plastic) discs at a metal basket. Sounds easy. But wind, weather, and natural obstacles like on-course trees make disc throwing a continual challenge.
Anyone with a few discs can play disc golf. Even permanent, official courses are often non-fussy affairs with little more than tee pads, fairways, and baskets. But courses also emerge in public parks, vacant lots, or backyards, using portable baskets. So people of all ages and backgrounds have ready access—and according to UDisc, 90% of official courses are free.
Disc golf’s origins are hard to decipher. For centuries, people have flung flat objects at targets. Still, some details appear certain:
1948—Walter Morrison and Warren Franscioni produce plastic throwing discs to replace metal ones.
1957—Morrison sells the rights for his “Pluto Platter,” an improved disc design, to Wham-O toy company.
1957—Wham-O renames the disc “Frisbee,” after a pie company. Frisbie pie tins were a favorite among college students, who recycled them for various tossing games.
1967—Wham-O employee “Steady” Ed Headrick patents a better-flying Frisbee.
1975—Headrick designs the Disc Golf Pole Hole, aka the “basket.” Oak Grove, the first official disc golf course opens, using Headrick’s design, in California.
1976—Headrick founds the Professional Disc Golf Association (PDGA) and receives membership number #001.
As disc golf advanced, Wham-O began sponsoring Frisbee events. Throughout the 1970s, contests sprang up before there were official disc golf rules—and while Frisbee was the only disc available.
Since then, disc golf’s popularity has risen, and with it have come more changes:
1982—PDGA publishes the first official rules.
1998—PDGA launches a ratings system to rank players.
2007—The International Disc Golf Center opens in Georgia.
Today, disc golf app UDisc reports that there are 14,048 official disc golf courses worldwide. An average of 4.3 new courses were installed every day in 2022.
Early disc golfers probably didn’t dream their sport would become so widespread. It took 41 years to reach PDGA member #100,000 in 2017. In early 2023, member #250,000 joined.
Disc golf momentum is flying high. Might you be the next recruit?
Why? Outdoor sports encourage spending time in God’s glorious creation and getting exercise at the same time. Beyond that, disc golf is a sport that crosses age and economic boundaries.
View a bubble map that shows how one event (such as disc golf’s rise in popularity) can lead to another.
