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. lowly 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.