ADVENTURE
DISC GOLF A game fit for competition or just for fun
By JILL BUCKLAND Photography By JOEL RINER
I magine walking in an ever- green forest, a soft wind whis- tling through the pine needles. Rays of sunshine dance among fluffy clouds and warm your face as the smell of dirt drifts up from the earth. In the distance, you hear the jingle of chains and muffled laughter. A bright-colored disc whirrs through the air, ‘thunks’ against a tree trunk, and falls abruptly to the ground. Most likely, you’ve stumbled into a game of disc golf, so grab a disc and join the fun. Disc golf has a long and wind- ing history with several starts and stops. Often called the Father of Disc Golf, Ed Headrick, then an employ- ee of the Wham-O toy company, in- vented the Frisbee in 1966, the Disc Golf Pole Hole in 1975, and in 1976 founded the Professional Disc Golf
Association (PDGA). Disc golf was established as an organized sport in 1974, although it was being played as a competitive sport in the early 1970s. Today, the PDGA maintains a website ( https://www.pdga.com/) that is easy to navigate and packed full of guidance on all things disc golf, including an extensive directory of disc golf courses around the world. I discovered disc golf in the ear- ly 90s while living in Missoula. The game was experiencing a wave of pop - ularity along with hacky sack, paint- ball and rollerblading. Disc golf was a perfect pastime for the strapped- for-cash college days when every penny and pack of Ramen was cher- ished. It was a regular occurrence to meet friends at the trailhead and take off with a bag of brightly colored discs slung over one shoulder.
The game is casual, easy to learn, physically low-key and inexpensive. Way back then, we called it ‘FOLF’ (the love child of frisbee and golf) and would take to the woods near town to fling discs at ‘designated targets.’ often just a specified tree in the distance. Disc golf is like golf, but players use a flying disc or frisbee instead of clubs and a ball. The disc is thrown from a tee area toward a ‘hole,’ which is typically a metal basket with catch chains elevated off the ground on a pole, but can be as simple as a 5-gallon bucket upside down over a fence post. As the turn is played, each player throws their disc from the location where it landed on the previous throw. Players can make it through a game with one disc, but there are different types of discs
SUMMER/FALL 2025 27
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online