Category: Disc Golf

That’s the nickname that Jay Reading goes by. Who’s Jay Reading? Before last week I had no idea.

I registered for a PDGA tournament here in San Antonio: the Battle All Up In the Briars tournament at McClain Disc Golf Course. I sent a link to my son Dan, who is the one who got me into the sport a few years ago. He read through the listing, and noticed who was organizing the tournament. He responded with “Jay Reading is the man – super cool”, accompanied by a picture of a signed Yeti disc. Apparently Dan had gone to a disc golf expo in Boston and met him there.

I had no clue who this guy was. I don’t really follow the professional circuit, and certainly didn’t in the late ’00s when he was one of the best playing professionally. But I thought it was pretty cool that Dan knew who he was.

On the morning of the tournament, I met Jay and introduced myself. I told him my son was a big fan, and showed him the photo of the signed disc he had. I asked if I bought a disc, would he sign it and take a selfie with it and me?

Now if you’ve ever been to any kind of tournament, it’s a lot of work for the organizers, and disc golf tournaments are no different. But Jay didn’t hesitate – he agreed immediately, with this result:

And it wasn’t just me – he seemed to connect with everyone there, even though there was a ton of other stuff going on.

They held a raffle to raise money for community disc golf programs, and one of the prizes was a hat from the Lazy Frog, a game store in Martha’s Vineyard where Dan lives that also carries a good selection of discs and other disc golf stuff. I texted Dan about that, and he told me that he had gone to the disc golf expo in Boston with the owner of the Lazy Frog!

Before I retired I got some NVIDIA swag for my kids, and Dan said to mention that he happened to be wearing the NVIDIA hoodie when he was talking to Jay. So I asked Jay if he remembered talking with anyone in an NVIDIA hoodie, and after a moment he said he did! He had bought some NVIDIA stock at some point, and thought that Dan worked there! It was crazy to have this connection almost 2,000 miles apart.

So now I’m also a Jay Reading fan: not for his disc golf abilities (although they are impressive – I watched some YouTube videos), but because he is a genuine person who seems to really care about what he does.

Yesterday I played in my second-ever PDGA tournament. Let’s get the obvious out of the way: I didn’t play that well. But it wasn’t about winning, although I did try my best on every shot. It was about keeping myself challenged: I want the motivation to work on my throws so that I don’t embarrass myself any worse than I did in my first tournament, back in January. I thought I was pretty good but not great, but I learned the truth: I was terrible, compared to people my age who had been playing for longer. The most obvious shortcoming was my distance off the tee: I routinely needed 2 or sometimes even 3 shots to reach the others’ first shot.

One thing to note, though: when I used to play regular golf (you know, the kind that uses little balls) and there was a player in a foursome who was not as good as the others, more often than not I heard others berate the player for slowing them down. Not here, though: my group was supportive and encouraging, and never made me feel unwelcome. Amateur disc golfers seem to be much friendlier than amateur ball golfers.

After the tournament I decided to get serious. I started to record my throws on video, where I could review it afterwards. That was especially enlightening! When I threw, I tried to consciously control my arm’s position and angle so that I was moving it in a straight line forward, while also keeping my weight centered. The video showed the exact opposite: I was taking the disc from very low, and instead of just reaching back, I was raising it almost a foot above my shoulders. All that up and down motion both robs you of distance and makes consistency impossible. I was also doing a lot of back-and-forth swaying with my weight.

I bought a practice net, so I could work on my technique throughout the day, instead of having to set aside a couple of hours to drive to a park to practice. I got rid of my walk-up and switched to a standstill throwing technique to reduce variables. I watched videos so I could compare my throw to others. But what really helped was discovering this app: Snapdisc. This records your throws on video, but also lets you compare your form when throwing to a model set to correct form.

What’s even more impressive is that the app is free! So I would record some throws, reviewing after each to see if what I felt matched what the camera saw. Slowly I began to get better feel for what I was doing. And when I did go out to a field to throw, I was getting longer. Before I would typically throw 150 feet, with an occasional 175. Now I’m averaging 180 feet with the occasional 240-250.

Yesterday’s results were not all that impressive, until you compare to how I did in January. In that first tournament, I shot +65 over par over the 36 holes; yesterday I was +48. That alone was a big improvement, but they also were very different courses: yesterday’s course had a LOT of trees, and I’m sure I hit most of them 😆. I lost at least a dozen in each round to that.

The other thing that was great about the tournament was the guy who ran it: Jay Reading. I’ll write about that in a follow-up post.

Today I got up, had my coffee, and headed out to play my first round of disc golf since starting my new job at NVIDIA. This time of year is very hot here in San Antonio, so I wanted to go early before it got unbearably hot.

I started off pretty well, and even made my second birdie of my (short) career! Here’s a photo I took of my tee shot; the light blue disc is hard to see, so I drew a yellow circle around it:

The course is very hilly, and with the slowly increasing temperature and high humidity, I was definitely feeling drained by the halfway point. I just finished hole #10 when I looked at my disc bag and my stomach sank: it has a small zippered compartment where I keep my keys while I’m playing, and I noticed that the zipper had managed to work itself open enough for the keys to fall out! I hoped that they had fallen into the compartment with the discs, but after pulling them all out, I realized that they must have fallen out somewhere in the previous 10 holes. That meant that I had to walk back the course, retracing my steps and scanning the ground for them.

That is harder than it might sound, because as this is a practice round by myself, I frequently throw 2 or 3 different discs on a hole to test different flight patterns, throwing technique, etc. And each time I pick up a disc to make my next throw, I put the bag down. So that meant that I had to remember every throw I had made, and where it landed. It goes without saying that this took a very long time, and the heat and hills were starting to get to me.

I had retraced my steps all the way back to the tee at #4, and started walking to the basket at #3 when I saw a man playing that hole, walking towards me. I asked him if by any chance he had found a set of car keys, and he asked me “What color is your car?”. That seemed like an odd question; how would one know the color of the car that a given set of keys were for?? But I answered anyway: “Red. And the car key is black.” He dug into his pocket and pulled out the keys, telling me that he found them by the basket at #2. He mentioned that he had put a note on the car to let the owner know that he had the keys and was on the course.

So this man had not only found my keys, he walked all the way back to the parking lot so he could leave me a note!

I started thinking about that: if he were so inclined, he could have not only stolen the car, but found my home address on the registration, and used the key to get into our home. Fortunately, he was a good person, and none of that happened. Instead, he went out of his way to make sure that I was reunited with my keys. So thanks, David, not only for finding my keys, but for helping to keep my faith in humanity alive!

A few days ago we covered the first two of the four mysterious numbers that are on each disc: Speed and Glide. Today we’ll cover the other two: Turn and Fade.

Turn is the ability of a disc to turn toward the direction of its rotation during the initial high-speed part of its flight. That’s a mouthful! But what does it mean?

Let’s assume that you throw the disc with your right arm, and use the common backhand delivery. When you throw it, the disc will be spinning clockwise when viewed from above, and the front edge is spinning toward your right side. That’s why we say that the “direction of its rotation” is to your right.

Turn values range from 1 to -5, where 1 is the most resistant to turn, and a -5 will turn the most. Having some Turn is good for beginners, as it tends to offset the Fade at the end of the flight, making a more or less straight throw. One problem, though, is that high Turn discs are not as stable when throwing into the wind, so in general you should avoid high Turn discs in that situation.

Let’s compare the flights of two discs that have nearly the same numbers, but differ significantly in their Turn:

The disc on the left, the Thunderbird, has a Turn of 0. Note how its initial flight is fairly straight, while the disc on the right, the Roadrunner, bends to the right for the first half of the flight. That is consistent with a Turn value of -4 for the Roadrunner. I own a Roadrunner, and I can testify that it is very hard to control when throwing into the wind.

The fourth and final number to understand is Fade. Fade represents the tendency of the disc to turn away from its direction of rotation at the end of its flight as it slows down. In other words, Turn and Fade move the disc in opposite directions.

Fade values range from 0 to 5, with 0 finishing the straightest, and 5 bending hard at the end of the flight. It might seem odd to want your disc to fade, but it can be helpful for distance control, where you want to ensure that the disc doesn’t keep sailing past your target. It’s also very useful for when you need to shape your shot around an obstacle such as a tree, as you can throw to the side of the tree, and let the disc’s natural fade bring it back towards the target.

We’ve covered what the numbers on your discs mean. So, as a beginner, how do you use that information? First and most importantly, avoid buying high Speed discs. Until you develop your technique and strength, you simply won’t be able to throw them reliably. Start with a lower-speed disc, such as a fairway driver.

Next: practice! Find an open space where you can practice without having your mistakes (you will make plenty!) cause any problems. Not too far from my house is a park that has a baseball field without any outfield fence:

I’ve circled two trees that I measured to be 240 ft. apart. This is perfect, as I can rarely throw more than 250 ft. I take my discs, noting the numbers on them, and imagine how I need to throw them to get close to the target tree. I have to also factor in the wind, if any. When I make a good throw, I then observe how the disc’s flight goes, and whether it matches what I was expecting. I gather my discs, and now throw from the other tree back towards the first. This way I can practice both throwing with headwinds and tailwinds, or sidewinds coming from each side. I repeat this several times with a set of 3 discs, and then when I have a good feel for them, try with a different set of discs. It’s really helped me understand what disc works best in different conditions. Now I just need to improve my consistency, which means: more practice!