Hello and welcome to Rattling Chains, a blog that will be about everything disc golf!

Over the past few months, I’ve searched for a disc golf blog to read and it seems that many blogs were sporadic or weren’t fully disc golf based. There are plenty of forums out there for disc golf, but I couldn’t find a blog that would give me the type of stories and things I had hoped were out there in a blog.

The burning question here is whether or not the disc golf community and the sport in general is ready for a full-time blog on the sport?

After all, it’s played outside and not near the computer.

I hope so.

I found a bunch of disc golf blogs and sent the links to some friends, seeing what they thought and if they thought it would be worth going forth with a project like this.

The many disc golf blogs we visited included ones that were based more on certain stores, players, courses or brands. Though some we visited were updated on a regular basis, many of them were short or didn’t provide content to make us want to go back.

Some photos are nice, but if I just wanted photos, I could search disc golf on Flickr.

And it’s also nice to see what kind of new products stores are getting, but if said store is 500 miles from me, it won’t be easy for me to drive down and have a peek.

Then there’s the National Tour.

If you haven’t seen any NT events, the players are amazing. For this sport to grow, the NT has to take off because that’s where the real exposure comes from.

Two of us here with the blog had the chance to volunteer at one of the biggest national tour events and the players are, for the most part, accessible and very fan friendly. The men and women are all simply incredible to watch. From players such as Avery Jenkins throwing 500 or 600 feet on a drive to Nate Doss making a putt many of us would only dream of making to former champion Chris Sprague keeping up with the next generation of golfers. On the women’s side, watching side-arm players like Sarah Stanhope and Sarah Hokom to one of the finest players in the world in Val Jenkins to the new generation in Paige Pierce, one could learn so much over the course of a weekend.

These are the players that are going to take the sport to the next level when it comes to exposure. But it’s not just them. It’s you. It’s the Saturday crew. It’s the Thursday league. It’s everyone who plays.

There’s a lot in the world of disc golf. There are websites — great ones — dedicated to course and disc reviews. We don’t intend on competing with that. That niche has been filled and it’s been done well. Don’t get us wrong — we’ll do some reviewing — but that’s not our focus.

Our focus is to hopefully bring you compelling and entertaining content. We want to show you personalities and cool holes. Great courses and unbelievable shots. Videos and photos. Stories and results. Some things will be serious. Some will be goofy. We’ll have guest posts and in-depth stories. We’ll have contests and giveaways, too! (Including ones we do only on our Twitter and Facebook feeds)!

Basically, everything disc golf.

I can honestly tell you that we are keeping our expectations low. We know that building a blog in a niche such as disc golf won’t be easy. But, it’s our hope that the community will enjoy this blog and help it to grow. There are so many thousands of disc golfers out there. Now it’s time to find out is all those disc golfers are interested in items such as this.

Think of our blog as a makeable 25-foot putt.

The chains are staring you in the face. But, there’s a decent headwind coming in. A few friends are watching and there’s a six-pack riding on this putt.

Do you come up short?

Or do you rattle the chains?

In a month or two, we’ll see how we did with that putt. It’s our hope that each of you, too, rattled those chains and came along for the ride with us. We can’t succeed without readers. Hopefully, you’ll provide us with feedback, comments and ideas.

And content!

For the initial few of us involved with this, we’re in New York. That’s it. We’re not doing this for money; we’re doing this because we think there’s a spot for it and because it’s something we want to be involved in. However, to be able to reach a broad audience, we need you to help.

So do you have ideas for stories? Do you want to write something? Send us a video? Review a course, disc, website or something else? Contact us. We’d be more than happy to accept any contributions.

Are you going on a killer disc golf road trip? Let us know and we’ll work with you to get some stories about the trip. Or tournament stories. Anything! We want our readers to be our friends. We’ll edit for spelling, grammar and style, but we will do all we can not to take your voice away!

Unfortunately, it’s not a paying gig. Heck, we’re not even getting paid. It’s all about loving this sport. If, down the line, we land some kick-ass merch and swag, we’re going to keep a database of those who contributed and plan on sending something out as a thank you. But we need to get to that point, first!

If you think you can help, here are a few things we’ll take (this isn’t everything, just some major points):

• Tournament directors, especially of non-PDGA sanctioned tournaments – to send us results as soon as possible after an event ends.
• Ideas for stories (please include any info we might need to contact people, in case that is important to said story).
• Photos and videos.
• Written stories (please contact us ahead of time to discuss!)

A lot of planning has gone into this blog, so hopefully you’ll enjoy it, stop back often, comment and be part of the community.

Spread the word, too!

And in the end, we’ll listen to readers. We’re grown ups, so we can take criticism, if needed. Hopefully there will be some praise, too!

In building for this blog, we’ve had the opportunity to talk with some great people. From top pros, to people in the industry to amateurs, we’ve got a good feel so far. And we know we haven’t even gotten past the top layer yet. Though we have a list of other topics, we’ll need the community to point us in the right direction for others so the content stays entertaining, worthwhile and fresh.

Some story ideas we’ll always be seeking:

• Some amazing pro or am giving back or with a good story.
• A youngster tearing up a local course and competing with big dogs.
• Possibly a player who has overcome something to be able to play.
• Courses being built and the stories behind them.

There are probably thousands of stories out there that go beyond the tournaments and numbers. Help us find them so we can write about them!

Initially, our goal will be to have 3-4 new posts per week. We’ll start slow until we start getting more items in our queue. As the blog grows, ideas start flowing and everything else, the goal is to become daily.

So what can you expect to see here?

Everything.

• Profiles and interviews with some of the top professional players, tournament directors and disc golf personalities.
• Tournament results in one place (as much as we can gather)!
• Items about the national tour, including results, previews and post-tournaments wraps.
• Reviews of select courses, discs, smartphone apps, video games and anything else disc golf related.
• Photographs and video.
• Contests (we already have some sweet swag to give away!)
• Website and store reviews
• Reviews about apps for phones and other techie things, when we can do it.

Being amateur players, we’ll try to aim toward that crowd, too. After all, while the pros are amazing, the amateurs and casual disc golfers make up a large portion of the disc golf community.

We’re also in the process of trying to put together one of the most extensive set of disc golf links there is. Check the links at the top. As we start, there aren’t a lot and it’s a work in progress. But we want to build. Send us links. Just make sure to explain what the link is so we can put it in the right spot!

In the end, we won’t survive without readers. We don’t want to write about ourselves or just about things we do.

We want to go way beyond that.

Thanks for stopping by. Follow us on Twitter. Like our Facebook page. Check us out on YouTube.

And rattle those chains!

For the first week, it’ll be a little sporatic as we get our feet wet. We have some posts planned, but most will be some contests and little things we’re working on making a regular thing. As the weeks go by, the more in-depth things will come out as well as we hope you’ll comment, enjoy and keep coming back!

If you have any comments, questions, thoughts, ideas or anything else, feel free to e-mail me and the crew at: pj [at] rattlingchains.com. Don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and like us on Facebook!