I will first admit that I am not as regular of a disc golfer as I would like to be. That’s the crappy part about not having a good course within 1:20 of you.
Still, I’ve traveled around and played several good and tough courses.
Through all of that, I’ve never (knock on wood) lost a disc.
There have been times I should have lost a disc and somehow found it. I’ve actually almost given up on looking for it before I stumbled across it and found it.
I’m sure, at some point, I’ll join the group of people who have lost discs. I’ll just hope it’s not one of my favorites!
A couple of weeks ago, during our weekly poll, we asked people about their best lost disc stories. And with that, we’re going to give a disc out to the best story as decided by members of our staff.
Before we get to the winner, I’d like to share a few other stories as there were some good ones for sure.
This one by GR Mendoza isn’t really a lost disc story, but still a fun one…
I have lost about 5 to 6 discs over the year. The most frustrating where the ones lost in high grass or thick woods. I have a RoadRunner that I’ve ALMOST lost 3 times in water. Had to jump in and get wet to get it…. one of my fav discs.
I can relate with that. I’ve almost lost one of my favorites but have stayed late to find it!
And there’s those discs that maybe are meant to be lost? This one is from Matt Mitten.
I have been playing disc golf for a year and a half now and with our average weeks of 70km winds and to water holes on the course, I have seen my fair share of plastic leave my bag for good. The water in our lake doesn’t have any dangerous creatures, but I’m pretty sure if you go into it enough times you will sprout a third arm. On one of theses days I pulled put my trusty buzzz and failed to account for the headwind and saw my disc turn out into the deeper part of the lake. Now on every turn of the park it says no swimming ( probably for mutation purposes) and so naturally I ran home to grab my swim trunks. I went in with my shoes on to prevent the attack of the leeches and went under in search of my disc after about 15 minutes I found it! Relief at last… Only for me to throw it into the lake a month later for it to never be found again, at least by me
At least Stan Frischman got to break even one time:
I’ve certainly lost my share of discs over the years About 20 since 1997. I had 3 returned and returned 5 that I found. Over the last 6 months my strong arm and pinpoint accuracy landed ten discs in water hazards at the newest course in our area. Six of the the 18 holes at Estero Community Park have water hazards, and I’ve donated at least one disc to each. I think I better buy some floaters! One day while playing In Estero, just after Easter, I lost one disc trying to throw over the water on hole 7. I was a little bummed, knowing I still had 3 more water holes to play. After I teed off on wooded hole 12 and approached my disc, I noticed a plastic, orange egg on the ground that must have been left over from an Easter Egg Hunt the week before. I have a habit of picking up trash on the course, so I picked it up, opened it, and low and behold there was a 10 dollar bill in it. I didn’t lose anymore that day, so I wound up even for change.
Sometimes one can lose discs in other and odd ways… just ask Ven.
Of the 3 discs I’ve lost only 2 were while (playing) disc golf. I lost a focus putter while shopping for a new disc golf bag. One of my disc golf cohorts uses a soft-sided cooler for a disc golf bag. Very convenient since it also holds cold beverages. I wanted one of those. So I brought one of my 6 Focuses with me to test the extra pockets on soft-sided coolers. I found one that works and bought it. Unfortunately, I left the Focus in the pocket of a cooler I did not buy. By the time I noticed, that cooler had been sold. I wonder what the person who bought the cooler thought about the disc golf disc that came free with the cooler?
How long do you all look for discs? I know if it’s not a tournament, I’ll look for a good while. So, apparently, will Luke:
My DX roc that I owe my second ace to is gone and no one ever called): I hit a tree really high and it disappeared into the bushes. I looked for almost two hours and never found it. The worse part about it was that I just simply love dx rocs. It is such a cheap disc but it had my favorite ace to date on it. It held a place in my heart
For Baker Helton, there’s sometimes no way of getting rid of a disc, even if he wants to lose it!
I bought a Star Vulcan that I thought would be a good (anhyzer) disc for me (RHFH) but it would constantly flip over but I would keep on trusting it! After a really long day and another failed drive from Vulcan, I chucked it in the deep woods thinking I would never have to see it again. Low and behold I got a call about an hour later and the guy gave me my disc back. Recently I threw an errant throw with the Vulcan and didn’t look to hard and was once again not upset that I lost it but once again someone I knew found it and gave it back to me! GRRR the Vulcan haunts me! One day I plan on throwing it into the ocean and if someone finds it again I will for sure know it was meant to haunt me.
Frank Garcia says he’s lost more than 100 discs over time, but one that was found turned out to be one he was willing to part with.
I was playing with an old friend in North Carolina, I don’t remember the course name though. There was a hole that ran along the water, first in the trees then opening up. I drive and my Star SL clips the last tree and ricochets out into the lake, at least a 100? into the water. A couple of months go by and I’m at home and my phone rings. It’s a young man, probably around 12-13 who asks me in a sulky voice if I lost a Frisbee. I ask him to be more specific but I’m intrigued by his southern accent. He explains where he found it and says “my mom said I had to call”. Yep, my disc from the lake somehow made it back to shore! I told him his mom was a good person and you should call if you find a disc with a phone number on it. However, since I was in Ohio he was more than welcome to keep the disc.
And now for our winning story…
I turn it over to Wes to explain:
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My favorite lost disc story isn’t actually my story but my brother-in-law’s. I videotaped the result. We went out for a round on the first weekend in February in the mountains of North Carolina. The air temp was feeling good at a nice 48 degrees.
On the first hole we were looking at a 300ft drive over a pond with a hill on the left side. It was only 150ft or so to clear the pond so neither of us were really worried about it. My brother in law steps up and slips on his approach, sending the disc into a strong hyzer line right into the top of the hill. The disc stood up on edge and rolled down the hill, parallel to the pond and right back toward us. It rolled a good 80-plus feet right back in our direction, then turn right toward the bottom of the hill, going right to the water.
We ran over to the pond to see if we could even see it and much to our surprise we could faintly make it out, about 6 feet in from the side of the pond. We couldn’t find any sticks or anything to go retrieve it so my brother in law begins to take of his layers, telling me, “NO DISC LEFT BEHIND!!!”
It looked deceptively shallow but slightly murky so we couldn’t tell just how deep it was. He took off his shoes and jacket, pulled up the pant legs on his sweats, and took the first couple steps into the recently thawed pond. After two steps in, he realized a few things, 1. The water was probably close to freezing (I’m fairly sure there was still some ice at the other end of the pond), 2. It was much deeper than anticipated, and 3. The bottom was pure mud.
With the visibility of the water quickly disappearing, he makes the quick decision to go for it. He duck dives under, and disappears for a full second or two, coming up victorious! He has the disc in hand! As he is frantically trying to get back out of the water, I notice his wallet floating away from him! I yelled out to him, requiring him to lunge back into the frigid depths to retrieve it as well. When he got out, he was so cold he could barely talk.
We had no other clothes so he stripped down and staggered back to the car to get warm. I have actual video of this amazing rescue!
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Wes, I think I speak for many of us when I say that if this video is online somewhere, please let us know. If it’s on YouTube, e-mail me the link and I’ll put it into the post so others can see this wonderful rescue of the disc!
Also, get me your address so I can send you a disc.
I’d like to thank everyone for the great stories. I would love to be able to post everything here, but it takes up a lot — so go back to the actual post and read all the responses!
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!
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I missed out on this contest and think that many will enjoy this little story even if it shows the negative of our sport. I also have a picture of the disc with the story written on the bottom.
Let me first start out by apologizing . . . for having no other way than to tie this short story into a blog entry. It has nothing to do with this roadtrip, except for the fact that it happened on my actual Anniversary and the roadtrip I am going to describe happened to be the 3 courses I played while on my Anniversary getaway. Now that I have apologized here is the story:
I went for a round of disc golf at Village Park in Sussex before we headed out of town for our anniversary getaway because I knew my disc golf would be limited over the weekend. I was only playing one disc this round, but I threw a handful of extra throws on a few holes because this was only my 5th time playing the course. I wanted to try out a few discs to see if they would be better suited for specific holes. I played through a guy on the third hole because he was playing a little slow. I kept ahead of him the whole round and I reached the 16th hole and I threw a few extra shots, one was with this 150 DX Destroyer (which I had found over the winter and hadn’t given it much of a chance yet). I just figured the lighter disc might allow me to get to the bottom of the hill on the 350’ hole.
I finished #16 and then took the long walk to play 17 and 18 and after I threw my drive on #18 I realized I had left one of my discs back there so after putting out I started walking down towards the area where I had left it and it was gone. Little did I know that the guy who I had played through on #3 had nearly caught up to me, found my disc, picked it up and immediately went to his car. He didn’t even bother trying to find me . . . which also means he neglected to finish his round. I couldn’t believe someone would knowingly come up on a disc in the middle of a fairway and not try to find the person they saw in front of them and ask if they had lost it. He also didn’t bother to call the phone number written in black sharpie (I always number my discs). Well, the story has only begun, because about 10 days later I stopped in to Play It Again Sports to see what kind of discs they had available. I was still in that phase of trying to throw all the different discs to find which ones I liked, and which ones just were not suited to my hands or my technique.
What do I find in their always scarce selection, but an orange 150 DX Destroyer . . .oh it sure looked like mine, but it had someone else’s name and # on it. My name had been scratched out in sharpie and his name had been written right over my information. His name and phone # were clear as day, but you could still see the shadow of my information underneath. I had to purchase the disc back (like I really need a 150 DX Destroyer) because of the story it created, and I had his name and # written on a post-it note on my wall. . .in fact I still do, until now, it is going in the garbage a this story will finally create the closure I need. The story got even more interesting when this clown showed up on the club page on Facebook. I tried to friend him, but he apparently was wise to my game. He had made some posts, and I finally decided to call him out in public since he was making stupid posts to begin with. Here is my personal retribution . . . to which he has not ever responded. “ I knew I would eventually run across you again Bryan . . .I left a disc behind on #16 at Sussex last fall and you were a couple holes behind me . . . I went on to finish Holes 17 and 18 and immediately began walking back to #16 where I left my extra practice drive . . . lo and behold it was gone and so were you. How do I know it was you . . . well I played through you earlier in the round. How do I know you took my disc . . . you crossed off my name and # . . . wrote your name and number on the disc, and then eventiually sold it to Play it Again Sports for probably like $2.00. I happened to be in Play it Again Sports a few weeks later and there it was . . . my disc with my name and number still visible scribbled over with your information. SO I bought it as a keepsake and I wrote the whole story on the bottom of the disc because I was appalled that you would walk off of #16 with a recently found disc knowing there was someone just a couple holes ahead of you who might have lost it. And then to find out it had been sold to Play It Again made it even sadder. So rather than be nice and look for me to try and return my disc you just headed out with it and sold your soul for $2.00 . . . This is not something I would expect to see from a GLDGC member . . . maybe you are just on the facebook page and not a member of the club. Ahh its just a little sad, when you could have been a nice guy and just returned my disc . . .even if you didn’t find me you could have called the phone number which was clearly written on the disc. Oh well karma will come back to bite you.”
I enjoyed writing that and have since moved on, but it is a part of my disc golf experience so it ended up in my blog. I have also seen him on the course a handful of times this past fall, while I am unsure if he knows who I am, but I know who he is! As for my round that day . . . I ended with my personal best at the time (54) and a pretty darn funny (or sad) story, which I promptly wrote on the underside of the disc to commemorate the occurrence.
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I also missed out on the contest but I will share this: My husband’s lost disc led him to 2 weeks in the hospital and a Thoracotomy due to his two cracked ribs and collapsed lung.
We both learned that day that no disc is worth the amount of the final hospital bill.
It’s also not worth someones life.
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I would have to say that out of all the discs I lost during the span of 15+ years of disc golf…this one takes the cake.
Back in 2001-2003 I rented a house on the Illinois/Wisconsin border on 200 acres. MANY touring disc golfers(Barry Schultz, Cam Todd, Mike “Worm” Young, Steve and Leslie Brinster, Dave Feldberg, Todd Branch, Avery Jenkins, Schwebby, Billy Crump, Brad Hammock, The Readings, etc) had stayed there over those years. One day a load of us were hucking big D across the field in front of my house, and some of the shots landed in a field across the road. A lot of these discs were “junkers”, and 2-3 got left in the field. This field across the road, was a County Forest Preserve property.
Fast forward to 3 years later. A good friend of mine, his father worked for that county in the Forest Preserve Division. One day Dan hands me a Gateway Blaze and says…”Is this your disc? It has your name on it. My dad found it in the Forest Preserve…10 MILES AWAY!!! Somehow that disc that was left for dead in the field across the street from my house…ended up in another Forest Preserve across the county. Don’t ask me, but I still never figured that one out.
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