Category: Personal

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.